


If I Die Young

by wekeeplivinganyway



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Genderswap, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-31
Updated: 2016-05-31
Packaged: 2018-07-11 11:03:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 48
Words: 94,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7046833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wekeeplivinganyway/pseuds/wekeeplivinganyway
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Contains spoilers about everything from Supernatural season four to the season eleven finale.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. What Doesn't Kill You

_Keep running._

            That was the only thought in Sam's mind. It replayed itself on a loop, over and over again until the words ran together into one blurred white line. They flashed in front of her eyes, and the only option she had left was to obey. Nothing else made sense. The world was swaying this way and that, morphing unnaturally, as if she were peering through a rain-spattered car window at the scenery whizzing past. Her lungs were alight with the flame of fatigue; her legs felt like mush, unstable and wobbly. The only sound around her was the pounding of sneakers on concrete, and her own labored breathing.

            _Don't stop. Keep running._

As she rounded the corner, Sam felt her feet skid beneath her, and suddenly she was face-down on the asphalt, slamming her head on the ground. Hot, furious pain erupted in her kneecap and elbow. Something wet and gritty leaked from the wounds onto the rock she lay on. Lights, bright and multicolored, shone about her head, disorienting her for a moment-a precious, irretrievable moment. The thin air in her chest exploded into the surrounding atmosphere, and she gasped. A ragged cough burst from her lips as she tried to regain herself, tried to force feeling back into her arms and legs, tried to keep running.

            There was a flutter of panic near her heart. Its unbreakable hold surrounded her sanity, its wings enveloping her wholly. She sat up very slowly and curled her legs up to her chest, wrapping her arms around them as she pressed against the brick wall behind her. It felt as if her brain was beating against her skull with a hammer. Sam breathed. All she could see was a darkened alleyway, a deep green dumpster, and no way of escape. _What if I don't get out of this one?_ she mused wildly. _What if this is it?_

And this was what reminded her of her motive.

            With a shaking hand Sam removed a vial from her jacket pocket, silently praying that it had not been broken in her fall. The sound of approaching footsteps kicked her heartrate up a notch and her breath, still recovering from the impact, hitched. In the dim light, the glass vial twinkled slightly. The liquid within was dark crimson, almost black, and it sloshed as she uncorked it. Some long-dead part of her seemed to scream not to do it, that this was wrong. As usual, she ignored it. Even if it was wrong, it was working. That was what mattered.

            Sam brought the vial up to her lips just as the footsteps stopped. She paused, listening intently. Someone - or something - had ceased movement barely a few yards away. Her ears picked up shallow, quick breaths. With her eyes still trained on the corner, she downed the contents of the container within a second, the warm, thick liquid coating her throat in a familiarly uncomfortable way.

            At once she felt a sort of strength surge through her veins. The headache that had developed because of the fall dissipated, and she was no longer so aware of the burning sensation on her elbow and knees. Her breathing evened out, her fingers curling around the now-empty glass cylinder. The fear that had overtaken her senses was gone, now, as well. There was only power: power, and rage.

            "Come out, come out, wherever you are!" a woman crooned mockingly. Sam stood, shoving the vial back in her pocket. "I know you're here, Sam Winchester," the voice continued. "Don't you think we should catch up a little bit? We've got _so_ much to talk about."

            In a flash Sam was slammed back onto the wall. Her legs and arms were pinned to it by an unseen force. She attempted to move them, shift them in any way she could, but to no avail. A groan of annoyance vibrated in her throat. The figure of a woman sauntered around the corner then, and her face was painted with sweat and pleasure. Sam watched her every move warily, the jagged knife in her back pants pocket poking her spine.

            "Well, well, well," Leah clucked. She touched Sam's stomach with her fingertip, and Sam stiffened. The other girl's blonde hair hung right above her shoulders and swayed as she chuckled. She was thin, shorter than Sam was, and beautiful. "Long time, no talk, huh, darlin'?" Leah's eyes, grassy green and wide, closed for a fraction of a second. When they opened again, they were completely black. The iris and all the white area surrounding it had been shadowed by an inky black that caught the light from a single window, six stories up. Sam did not react, only breathed.

            Leah blinked again, and her eyes returned to their normal emerald hue. She turned to begin pacing back to the opposite wall. Sam saw her chance; she used all her strength to move her supernaturally-constrained arm to reach for her back pocket. Her fingers wrapped around the knife there, but she waited. Leah looked back at her and grinned, her straight white teeth bright in the darkness.

            "How've you been, Sammy, honey?" she inquired. Immediately Sam snapped, her voice gruff, "Don't call me that." Leah smiled wider, and a glint of animosity made her irises gleam. "Oh, that's right. Only you're little boyfriend is allowed to call you that." She paused, looking thoughtful, and then added, "Or should I say, _was?_ "

            The ring on Sam's right ring finger gleamed, as if in confirmation. "You bitch - "

            "Ooh!" Leah laughed, and she held her hands up in a sort of surrender-like pose. "No need for name-calling! This is just a friendly conversation." Sam scoffed, rolling her eyes. Her patience was exceedingly thin, and she was growing angrier and angrier with each passing second. "If that were true, then you wouldn't feel the need to hold me up here. But I think you're more afraid of me than anything."

            Leah's face darkened. "Afraid? Of _you?_ Oh, honey, I ain't afraid of nobody, and certainly not some weak little human girl."

            "Then let me down." It was neither question nor order. The statement was a challenge, and Sam initiated it with her eyes. Leah's eyebrows pulled together, wrinkling her young forehead slightly. _She can't be more than twenty-two years old_ , Sam thought. Her hand holding the knife grew sweaty, and she remembered the empty vial. The knife was the fail-safe.

            Finally, the pressure on Sam's muscles relented, and she flopped to the asphalt in a heap. She stood quickly and stared at Leah, a bit confused. The other woman upraised her, looking her over. Then her eyes widened considerably, and she retreated a step. "You're different," she breathed, frightened. "You aren't fully human. You - "

            Before she could say anything else, Sam threw her hand forward and clenched her fingers together. Leah's words cut out, and the veins in her neck contracted. She scrabbled at it, trying to free the muscles to allow oxygen through, but she could not. Sam's eyes narrowed, the air in her chest solidifying as it squeezed against her ribcage with the effort. Her brain swelled inside her head, barraging her skull on all sides, but she kept going. Leah dropped to her knees, choking. " _Please_ ," she gasped. "I don't want to go back. Don't make me go back."

            Sam twisted her wrist so that her palm was facing the sky, her fingers still bent and tout. A swirling black smoke started seeping from Leah's mouth, seeming to pile on the asphalt though it had no mass. It churned, billowed, and Leah kept choking out breaths and pleas, but Sam did not concede. A bubble of blood popped in her nostril. She felt the hot stuff drip out of her nose and trickle down to her lip, tasted the metallic, coppery liquid. At last, Leah's body went limp and fell sideways, and the smoke circled in front of her. Her hand trembling, Sam focused the last bit of her energy on it. After a moment, it appeared to catch fire, its perfect blackness laced with the thin fingers of the flames. Then, it exploded, and all was silent.

            A sigh escaped Sam like a canon releasing its ammunition, and she sunk to the ground. Her breathing was uneven once more, but this time they were deep, steadying breaths. She wiped the blood from her mouth with the back of her hand. The sound of her blood pumping in her head was deafening, like the entire world should be able to hear it. Her ears throbbed, and the ground tilted beneath her. She laid a hand on the asphalt to keep from losing consciousness. Now she watched the motionless, ragdoll-like body of the girl before her.

            Two minutes passed, and still yet the young woman had not made a sound. Sam felt despair press its heavy hand on her chest as she continued to watch, to hope. Of all the times she had used this power as opposed to regular exorcisms, only once had the vessel of the demon survived. A man. Harold, or something like that. And even then, his body was so broken that he did not survive the ride to the hospital. Though it was empty, the vial lying in Sam's pocket felt as if it weighed a thousand pounds, as if it were prohibiting her to forget its presence. She could already feel the effects of it wearing off; she was growing weaker again. The wounds and torn skin on her body screamed for attention, but she did not give it. There would be time to tend to them later. At the moment, she was willing the body of Leah to move.

            She did not know what the demon had put the girl through. She would probably never know. A sort of naïve building of hope erected itself in her heart, its foundation built on one word: _maybe_. Maybe it wasn't too bad. Maybe they're stronger than the others. Maybe they will live. Because though Sam's heart had grown colder over the course of these past four months, she still could not bear to see another person die because of this power. Despite all the years she had been doing this - saving people, hunting things, the Winchester family business - she had never gotten used to the death. Of course, she always told herself that she saved more people than she lost, and that a few lives along the way were a small price to pay for the bigger picture, but she did not believe it. After all, that was something her adoptive father would have said, and, even though he was a great hunter and practically fearless, she did not want to be like him.

            And if he could have seen what she was doing now, she knew he would never see her the same way.

            Sam blinked a few times, and the form of the girl still did not stir. It had been fifteen minutes. Withdrawn and dismal, she resolved that she was dead and that it was no use wasting more time out in the open. She stood, stretching her legs, testing her balance. The world did not tilt around her, so she figured it was safe to start moving again. With one last glance down at the young girl, Sam stuffed the knife deeper into her back pocket and sprinted out of the alleyway. She pushed the young woman from her mind as best she could.

            Casting her eyes around in search of any police officers, she squinted to try to make out what the street marker at the end of the sidewalk said as she approached it. _W. Livingston St._ , it read.

            _The motel is on the corner of West Cleary Street and North Court Street_ , she reminded herself. A map of the town in northeast Illinois she was in, Pontiac, materialized in her mind. She pictured the crisscrossing roads of Pontiac, her eyes shut in concentration. _I could cut across Prairie and North Streets, and follow North Division Street till I get to Cleary. Then I'll go left. Should be there in about twenty minutes or so if I hurry._

            She did not reach for her cellphone to call him and let him know she was coming. She did not pull out the phone and send him a message so he would know she was alright. She did not even allow her fingers to twitch out of habit. After so long without him around, she had disciplined herself in such a way that she had become self-reliant, no longer codependent. Ruby was something to fall back on - at least, she was sometimes. And though it filled Sam with a sense of betrayal every time she was around Ruby, she knew it was what she had to do, because one day, she would figure out a plan. She would bring him back, someday, somehow. She _had_ to.

            As she walked briskly down the street she was using as a shortcut, Sam's mind flitted back and forth among subjects. She tried not to think about the hollowness in her chest, or the way she needed to drink excessive amounts of alcohol before she could sleep each night. A reminder, almost like a little yellow sticky note in her head, poked at her brain, prodding her to remember to hack into another credit card balance because the one she had was nearly spent. And there was something else, too. Something she could not put her finger on. It was persistent, important, but what _was_ it?

            Suddenly, she stopped. _What's today?_ she asked herself internally. Quickly she whipped out her phone and checked the date. September 18th, 2008, it told her in bold lettering. _Not Bobby's birthday,_ she thought. _That was last month. Not Mom or Dad's birthday. What_ is _today?_ For the next several blocks she wrestled with the feeling of forgetting something, though there was no logical reason for it. This day was not important in any shape, form, or fashion. Why did it matter, and why was she quivering to her very soul? Why was there a tiny voice in her head saying that today was the day everything changed?


	2. You Feel Your Heart Beat Loudest When It's Breaking

                  The motel loomed in front of her before she even recognized she had arrived. Her legs felt weak, now that she allowed herself to break free from her thoughts. There was nothing she wanted more than to go and lie down. The street around her was deserted, and when she entered the lobby, the desk clerk was asleep, his face pressed to the keys of his computer. He was snoring loudly. Sam smiled to herself as she climbed the steps to her room on the second floor. The staircase was rough concrete, and the walls were compact, tight. It was as if they wanted to suffocate her.

            Sam nearly collapsed against the wood of her motel room door. She fished the key to it from out of her pocket, her fingertip brushing the ice-cold glass of the empty vial. She would have to have Ruby fill it up again soon. If she was to be doing this all on her own, then she needed all the strength she could get.

            Even if that meant drinking the blood of a demon.

            She didn't even bother flicking the lights on as she stumbled inside. With the tip of her foot she shoved her backpack, which was sitting on the floor, against the wall to her right. Then she tossed the jagged knife on top of it, watching as it glinted in some unseen light. She stopped at the fridge and grabbed a bottle of beer. Her hand shook as she twisted the tab off. The alcohol felt wonderfully cool and numbing on her throat; she downed half the contents in one swig. That incessant pounding in her head had died, replaced now with just a dull throb. Sam dragged herself over to one of the armchairs that sat in front of the television and sank into it, the beer freezing her fingers. The remote did not find its way to her hand, nor did she rise to turn it on. She simply sat there, in the dark, and finished her beer.

            Try as she might, Sam Winchester just could not forget.

            Dark circles ringed her deep blue-green eyes due to her lack of sleep. On the nights she could manage some shut-eye, it was only for two or three hours. Most nights she just didn't sleep at all. Nightmares plagued her every hour of the day. Nowadays, she was not eating much, either. Whether it be anxiety or sadness, there was always something that filled her stomach to the point that she could not consume anything without throwing it back up within the hour. These factors together were causing her light brown hair to begin to fall out in clumps here and there. But her health was the least of her worries. So she worked. Day in, and day out, she searched the internet and newspapers for a case she could delve into. She scavenged for mysterious disappearances, unexplained deaths, strange "animal attacks." Anything she could grasp to. That was all she had, now. Hunting. It was ironic, to her, because that was the one thing she always swore would never happen. She vowed to herself when she left home to go to college, against her father's wishes, that she would never get pulled into the madness and dangerousness of this line of work. Nothing would ever make her pick up the family business and let it devour her life like it had her family's.

            All Sam wanted was to be normal. She wanted to be a normal lawyer, help normal people. She'd gotten into normal Stanford University. She studied for normal law classes and received normal grades. She met a normal boy, and thought they would have a normal family together one day. A little house in the suburbs, two or three kids, PTA meetings, bake sales, maybe even a dog. But then, her life had never been _normal_ , had it? Did she really think that just because she left home that that would change? Just because she never talked about her past, that it never happened? If so, she was sorely mistaken. And it cost her.

            When she met Jesse in her sophomore year of college, Sam did not hesitate to create a whole new past for herself. She never told Jesse that her birth parents had nearly killed her on several occasions because of their abuse, and that she often had been babysat by the Winchesters, their next door neighbors. She neglected to mention that her parents ended up dead in a car crash when she was three months old, and that the Winchester family took her in as their own daughter, renaming her _Sam_. She kept quiet about the fact that she did not remember what her birth name had been. She did not tell him that Mary Winchester, her would-be adoptive mother, was murdered by a demon when Sam was six months old, and that her father John Winchester became an obsessed hunter of the supernatural to find what killed his wife, and that he dragged his son and Sam along with him to every town where something supernatural threatened someone. No, she never told Jesse any of this. So she could understand why he was a bit surprised when a man showed up at their apartment door one day, claiming to know Sam and needing to speak to her about their father.

            She could still hear the statement as if he were right next to her, saying it again. "Dad's been on a hunting trip and hasn't been home in a few days." To anyone else, those words would be less frightening. They would mean a call to the local park ranger, or the police. But to the Winchesters, nothing was ever that simple. And Sam remembered the feeling that settled in the pit of her stomach when he said that, but how the feeling was sort of overshadowed by her shock, her _happiness_ , at seeing him again after so many years apart. She remembered how something bloomed in her chest, warm and familiar, at the sight of his chiseled features and his steely green eyes, at the sound of his deep voice. And then the feeling was gone, because he was urging her to leave with him, to drop everything and just _go_ , like she had been doing her entire life up till that point.

            Sam wondered, every day since then, what would have been different had she gone at once. Perhaps Jesse would still be alive. Perhaps the demon Azazel would never have killed him the way he killed Mary. Perhaps all those who died on their trek across the country, fishing for cases to solve, would not be dead. Perhaps Sam would have been able to kill Azazel before so many lives were lost in the search for him, before she got kidnapped by him and taken to a camp for his protégés, before she got her spinal cord sliced in half by another one of Azazel's "special children," before Dean ever had to make a deal with a demon to bring her back from the dead.

            _Dean._

            His name burned a hole through Sam's heart every time she heard it, regardless of whether she thought it or it was said aloud. In her mind, it all went back to that night Dean appeared at her apartment door and she turned him away. If she had never done that, then everything would be different. Maybe even John would still be living, because they would have never been in that car the night it was slammed into by an eighteen-wheeler and Dean would never have been sent in to a coma that scared their father into making a deal with Azazel. And if their father was alive, then Dean would have never gone through that time when he was utterly broken inside and would shut himself off from Sam, shattering her heart in the process because she couldn't reach him. Sam believed, deep in her heart, if she had gone with him when he came, like her gut told her to, then Dean would not be in Hell.

            Six bottles of beer littered the hardwood floor beneath her feet. The seventh was clamped in Sam's fist, her knuckles turning white with how tightly she was holding it. She blinked a couple of times, bringing herself back to reality. With groggy movements she turned her head a bit to look at the digital clock that hung on the wall about eight feet away. It was 8:47 AM. She had gotten home at 3:00. She realized with a slight jolt that it was light outside, and she had been sitting, in total silence, for over five hours. And she did not remember getting up to get the other beers.

            Brushing off the uneasiness, she breathed and tried not to think about how she had lost such a large chunk of time. She drank the last of the cold one in her hand, and set it on the floor with the others, telling herself she would clean it up later in the day. Just as she began to trudge over to the bed, there were three knocks on the door. They sounded like gunshots in the quietude of the motel. Sam groaned out loud, rubbing a hand over her face. _It's probably Ruby_ , she thought tiredly. In some deep part of her mind, she wondered why the demon girl was knocking when she could simply appear anywhere she wanted. The thought surprised Sam into wakefulness. Before she reached the door, she picked up the knife that had been thrown haphazardly onto her bookbag, and held it firmly behind her back. She slid the deadbolt off the door and opened it.

            She was met with a chilly fall breeze, the distant sound of honking, and no one in sight.

            Sam wrapped her arms around herself, the knife gleaming as it caught the light from the sun. Tentatively she took a step over the threshold, peering to the left and right. A growing sense of not being alone pressed in on her from all sides, and she shivered. _Maybe you just imagined it._

            "Hey, miss? Are you alright?"

            Jumping out of her skin, she looked back to the left and saw a man watching her curiously. He had a slight smile on his face. Quickly she hid the knife behind her again. "Yeah, I'm fine," she called. "Just thought I heard something out here. You didn't happen to see anybody by my door, did you?"

            The man shook his head, walking toward her. She saw that he was in the staff uniform for the motel. His nametag read _Jake_. As he approached Sam stared at his blue eyes, watching for any shift in color. He smiled a bit wider when he reached her, and leaned against the iron railing behind him. Sam's shoulders relaxed, and she discreetly tossed the knife back onto the bookbag. "Don't think so," he answered. "Why? Expecting someone? Sister or parent or boyfriend or something?"

            She could tell he was flirting with her, but decided he was harmless. After all, he was fairly handsome. _What could it hurt?_ "No, nothing like that. Don't have any of those, actually." She smiled wryly. His eyebrows furrowed. "Oh, I'm sorry." She raised her eyes to him and saw that he was sincere. "No, it's fine! I was just making sure nobody was creeping around, you know?"

            Jake chuckled. "Yeah, I get that. That's kind of my job, around here. Along with replacing towels and stuff like that." He winked, and Sam rolled her eyes, amused. With a half-grin, he held out his hand to her. "I'm Jake, by the way."

            "Sam." There was something in Jake's eyes that Sam automatically liked. Their handshake lasted a little longer than it should have.


	3. Little Things

                  It was 12:57 AM that evening, and Jake still had not left. As Sam lay beside him in the bed, listening to him as he ordered a pizza for the two of them, she tried to feel something toward him. She dug deep into her soul and thumbed around for some sort of emotion, _anything_. But there was nothing to be felt.

            She had never done anything like this before - never had sex just to do it. Previously she had always thought it was a bond, and should only be treated as such. Of course, when Jesse was killed, her view on love had been morphed somewhat anyway. But now, she was scaring herself. She had gone on that hunt last night on the intent of it being a suicide mission. She wanted the demon that had possessed the body of poor Leah to kill her, to end everything. To end her constant guilt, the apathy or complete oversensitivity, the tattoo over her heart that no longer had its twin. But she couldn't even _die_ right. And now, she was lying beside a man she knew nothing about, and she felt no connection to him whatsoever.

            Normally, she would talk to Dean about something like this.

            But Dean was in Hell.

            _And that's your fault too._

Sam stared at the ceiling, Jake's voice long gone quiet, and wished the world around her would disappear. That something great and powerful would come and swallow Earth whole, taking everything with it. That she could effectively tune out all the accusatory voices in her head that told her it should have been her who died. That she had not been so stupid as to let herself get stabbed to death, and that Dean would have never made the deal in the first place, so he would have never been dragged down by hellhounds.

            She wished, most fervently, that she had never been born to begin with. That way, the Winchesters would have never gained an extra child, and Mary would have never been killed so that Azazel could get to Sam, and John would have never become a hunter and forced Dean into it, and nobody would be hurt or dying because of her existence. She wished she was never born.

            Dean had always given her excuses when she asked questions. Like, "Dean, where is Mommy?" and, "Why's Daddy leaving again?" and, "How come I don't look like you or Dad?" He had told her sugary, untrue answers when she was young, and as she grew up, he began to brush her off as being paranoid. When she was ten, and he was sixteen, and their father had called to tell them he would be another few days, she sat him down and forced him to talk. She refused to relent until Dean had told her everything: about her birthparents, how she had come close to death many times, how his family had taken her in and renamed her when they died. Sam had asked what her real name used to be, but he did not know. She was always afraid to ask John, because she did not want to upset him by insinuating she knew he was not her real father. Dean had laughed a little nervously as he explained that she had never _fully_ been adopted. Sam liked the prospect, though she would never tell him that. She had always known something was different about her and Dean's relationship. It had never been like a brother-sister bond; it was more than that. And when he told her the truth about her family, she had been somewhat relieved, because having feelings toward her brother would not have been good for anyone.

            Almost as if it wanted attention, the ring on Sam's right hand felt abnormally heavy. She lifted her hand up in front of her face, looking at it closely: the sleek, streak-free silver surface, the smattering of tiny baby blue stones inset on the top. They each caught the light individually. In the back of her mind, the engraving on the underside of the ring appeared in a perfectly clear image. _To, Sammy. Love, Dean._

She remembered all too well when it had been given to her. It was the night she had opened her acceptance letter from Stanford University. The night that she left home. The night John Winchester told her if she walked out the door, she should not bother coming back. So Sam walked. It was a warm July evening, and she was seventeen years old. She had gotten halfway down the street when she heard footsteps behind her, and someone called, "Sammy!"

            "Go back inside, Dean," she replied, knowing without looking who was approaching. A second later, she felt someone take her hand, and she spun around. "Let go," she hissed at him. Dean's face had been so contorted with fear, and pain, and disappointment, that presently, Sam could vividly recall the sensation it brought to her body. Something between falling into the sub-zero waters near Alaska, and being thrown into a volcano head-first. Needless to say, it was not pleasant. He had turned twenty-three in February, which made him a little more than five years older than her. "Sammy, please," Dean had begun, but Sam cut him off. "I'm not going back in there," she said surely. "He said to leave, so I'm leaving."

            "No, I'm not asking you to go back." Dean shook his head rapidly, letting go of her hand. He had run his fingers through his short hair. "He's pissed, you're pissed, and I don't want to see you get your ass kicked by a middle-aged man. So for the love of God, Sam, don't go back in there."

            Sam had cracked the smallest of smiles.

            "He doesn't know I'm out here. He told me _not_ to come out here, actually. But I just, uh," stuttered Dean, rummaging through his pocket, "I wanted to give you this." He pulled a tiny red box out of his jacket, holding it in his palm. Gently he had pressed it into her hand. "I was saving it for your birthday, but I don't... I probably won't know where you are when this one comes around, so here." Sam had swallowed hard and touched the lid. "Don't open it now," Dean had added hastily. "Later. When you're on your bus to California or something."

            She had nodded. "So I guess this is it, huh?" she inquired. Her voice shook. His gaze intensified as he answered, "For a while, yeah. I-I'm sorry, Sammy." Dean had been glaring down at his shoes as if they had insulted him. Sam nodded again and turned away, walking off a bit.

            "Sam," Dean had called once more, and he waited until she looked at him to continue. "One day, I'm gonna come find you. And it'll all be okay again."

            Sadness flooding her veins, Sam had taken a single stride toward him. She grabbed his chin between her index and thumb, and, without so much as a thought, softly touched her lips to his. She remembered, presently, how Dean's eyes had widened to the size of car rims, and how it felt as if the skin on their lips was burning, and how her head grew light and the ground rocked violently beneath her. The kiss lasted half a second, and then it was over, and Sam had wanted nothing more in the world than to kiss him again. She knew, however, that she had had to leave, or he would have gotten in major trouble. "Goodbye, Dean," she said. At that, she turned again and left Dean standing in the middle of the road, looking completely dumbfounded.

            She had opened the little red box on the bus ride out of town. Her eyes had watered heavily when she saw the beautiful ring inside, and she had felt as if her heart had broken into several jagged pieces in her chest. There was a miniscule Post-It note attached to the inside lid.

            _Sammy_ _-_

_It's a promise ring. Don't ask me what the promise is, because I'm not really sure myself. It's just a promise. So if you think of a worthy cause, or some cosmic, life-changing promise we could make that would justify me spending so much money on this goddamn ring, then I'm all ears. I love you, bitch. Happy eighteenth. (You're finally an adult, like me. Whoop-dee-freakin-doo.)_

_~ Dean_

After she read that, she had the overwhelming desire to call him "jerk" one last time, and to see his playful grin as she punched him in the arm. But she couldn't, so she contented herself with looking out the bus window and hoping that, somehow, he could feel her thinking about him. And hoping he was thinking about her, too.

            With a smile, Sam now remembered how Dean reacted when he saw that she still wore the ring, after all these years. He had noticed it not long after Jesse's death. She remembered the way he grabbed her hand and held onto it as she tried to storm away angrily because of something he'd said. He held her fingers up close to his face, staring at the ring. "You still have it?" he inquired, somewhere between shocked and deeply moved. Sam had snatched her hand away from him and replied, "Of course I still have it, dumbass. It came from you."

            Something between them had changed because of that development. Sam could never quite put a finger on what the change was, but she knew it was there. It was a different feeling, like a new kind of understanding. She liked it, whatever it was.

            It was these sorts of remembrances that drove Sam out of her mind with longing and regret.


	4. Welcome Home, Son

For the second time in a day, a knock at the door pulled Sam from her stupor, and she felt Jake rise from the bed. She stood up, scratching her hip and attempting to ward off the emotions of her memories, as she heard the door open. "So where is it?" she heard his voice prompt whoever was at the door. Sam reached into the duffel bag that was stuffed under her bed and pulled out Dean's dark green tee-shirt. She slipped it over her head, feeling the hem brush the tops of her skinned knees, and heard another voice saying something. She could not decipher the words. The voice sounded familiar, though, she realized.

            "The pizza?" Jake's voice replied. "The one that takes two guys to deliver, apparently."

            Rolling her eyes with a little smile, Sam strolled into the main room, brushing the hair from her face. Jake turned to face her, revealing the two figures in the threshold. "Hey, is that the - " She stopped short, every muscle in her body freezing into stone. The sentence died on her lips, along with her breath, which seemed to become concrete in her lungs. Blood roared in her ears like waves on a shore, like a thunderstorm, crashing against her in relentlessly powerful spates. The room suddenly felt thirty below zero, and far past one hundred degrees, simultaneously. The edges of her vision turned black and fuzzy, almost as if it was framing the image of who was standing at the door. The first man was Bobby, whom she had not seen in months. He looked the same as always: graying brown hair, a cap on his head, a beard and solemn look on his face. The man standing beside him was who caught Sam's full attention. He was shorter than her by a few inches. His hair was disheveled, his clothes a bit tattered. The muscles under them were wired, tightly-wound, like he was nervous. Or bracing for attack. He had a strong jaw and piercing green eyes.

            "Hiya, Sammy," said Dean, his voice constricted.

            Those were the words that set Sam into motion. She lunged at him, her fist flying at his face. Bobby stepped in just in time to prevent the impact, but Sam struggled against his hold. "Who are you?" she screamed at Dean's form. She started to go for the knife in the corner of the room. "Like you didn't do this?" Dean bellowed back at her.

            "Do _what?_ "

"It's him!" Bobby shouted, kicking the door closed as he attempted to keep her in his grasp. "Listen to me, it's him! I've been through this already. It's really him!"

            It took a moment for what he said to register in Sam's mind, but gradually she ceased her fighting. Bobby released her and stepped back. Dean was staring at her with wide eyes, his mouth hanging open slightly. He strode toward her, closing the distance between them, and swallowed hard. Sam raised a trembling hand up to his face and touched the backs of her fingers to his jawline. She felt his skin heat under hers, watched as his eyes slid shut and he swallowed again, saw his eyebrows pull together as if he was in pain. Tears sprung into her eyes. And the only thing that she could think at that moment was, _He's real._

"D-Dean?" she whispered. He opened his eyes again, smiling at her in a pained sort of way. "I know," he said. "I look fantastic, huh?"

            There was a second's pause in which an unimaginable weight evaporated from Sam's chest, freeing her previously occluded lungs to inhale air with such ease that she nearly burst into tears. It was as if several planets had been placed on top of her, and somebody had just lifted them. She pushed a stream of breath from her mouth, and jerked Dean toward her forcefully. Her arms wrapped around him so tight that she worried, in the back of her mind, if she was hurting him, but then she reminded herself that she did not care. She squeezed her eyes shut, letting everything around her melt away, as she felt his strong arms encircle her with reciprocating vigor.

            "So, are you two, like, together?" interrupted Jake's voice. Sam let go of Dean, with some reluctance, and looked at the other man. "What?" she said. "No. No. He's... he's my best friend." Jake did not look convinced. "Got it. Maybe I should go?"

            "Yeah," Sam replied quickly, remorsefully. "I think that's a good idea. Sorry." Jake grabbed his car keys from the coffee table, and left without a word or backward glance. A part of Sam felt guilty that he had to leave so abruptly, but it was a very small part. The rest of her was alight with a joy she had not felt in a long time. She sat down on the couch, breathing deeply, and looked up. Bobby and Dean were both staring down at her suspiciously.

            "So tell me," said Dean. "What'd it cost?"

            Sam smiled crookedly. "The guy? I don't pay, Dean."

            "That's not funny, Sam," he replied at once. She went quiet, watching as he folded his arms. Bobby glanced between them. "To bring me back. What did it cost? Was it just your soul, or was it something worse?"

            "You think I made a deal?" she asked them. "That's exactly what we think," said Bobby. She shook her head in disbelief. "Well, I didn't."

            "Don't lie to me," Dean told her intensely. There was a hardened expression on his face that Sam was used to seeing, but she wished he was not wearing it right then. He had just gotten back; did he have to be mad at her already? "I'm not lying," she insisted.

            "So what," said Dean, disregarding the fact that she spoke, "now I'm off the hook and you're on it? You're some demon's bitch? I didn't want to be saved like this!"

            Sam stood up, anger flaring inside her. "Look, I wish I _had_ done it, alright?" He advanced toward her, grabbing her by the shoulders roughly. His face was angry, but his eyes were afraid. "There's no other way that this could've gone down," he said dangerously. "Now, tell the truth!"

            "I tried _everything!_ " she shrieked, yanking his arms off her. "That's the truth! I tried opening the Devil's Gate. Hell, I tried to bargain, Dean, but no demon would deal! Alright? You were rotting in Hell for months. _For months_ , and I couldn't stop it," she told him, her voice cracking. There was a definite pain in Dean's eyes now. "So I'm sorry it wasn't me, okay? Dean, _I'm sorry_." A tear slipped from her eye, and she turned her head away, wiping it off.

            Dean took a deep breath, blinking rapidly. "It's okay, Sammy, you don't have to apologize. I believe you." He put a hand on her cheek and rubbed her tear-stained skin with his calloused thumb. Sam met his eye for a moment, the sensation so heart-wrenchingly familiar that she almost could not comprehend he was actually there again. She put her smaller hand over his, and that same feeling she got those three years ago when he came to get her at her apartment flooded her veins. It seemed that time had only intensified it.

            "Don't get me wrong," Bobby said, "I'm gladdened that Sam's soul is intact, but it does raise a sticky question." Sam and Dean exchanged a look, Sam's heart pumping a little faster. Her deep eyes met his striking greens, and a sort of silent conversation passed between them. Dean spoke aloud what they both were thinking.

            "If she didn't raise me, who did?"

            An uncomfortable, anxious silence filled the room with the consistency of molten lava. Sam felt as if she could sense each and every molecule in the air as it collided with her skin. She was afraid to take too deep a breath, because the sound would be colossal. Her mind raced at the speed of light, running through every possibility of who could have saved Dean from Hell. Surely none of the demons would have pulled him out. They wanted him down there more than anything. And no other creature had that kind of power. So what could it have been? _Who_ could it have been? Nobody looked at one another. Bobby stared at the floor, examining his boots; Dean's gaze traveled around the room. He took in the papers shuffled untidily on every flat surface available, and the small cluster of empty bottles littering the floor next to an armchair. Sam glanced up at him when she felt his eyes on her. The confusion and mild concern etched on his face made something cold and solid drop into her stomach.

            Standing rather suddenly, she said, "Anybody want a beer?" Bobby, appearing grateful for the break in the quiet, nodded once. Sam realized at that moment just how much she had missed seeing his fatherly smile. The two men moved to sit on the couch she had just vacated, and Sam, returning with three bottles, sat diagonal to them in the armchair. She attempted to push the empty ones behind the chair as inconspicuously as possible.

            "So what were you doing around here if you weren't digging me out of my grave?" Dean inquired, taking a sip of his beer. Sam swallowed her drink. "Well, once I figured out I couldn't save you, I started hunting down Lilith, trying to get some payback." This statement earned her one of Dean's signature looks: raised eyebrows, head tilted to the side, mouth puckered slightly. She loved being able to see it again.

            Bobby's expression, however, was not as comforting. "All by yourself?" he said accusingly. "Who do you think you are, your old man?"

            Sam cringed, her eyes zigzagging away from his gaze. "I'm sorry, Bobby. I should have called. I was just... I was pretty messed up." Guilt caused her heart to flutter unpleasantly. Dean reached forward and put his hand over hers, rubbing his thumb softly over her knuckles. She smiled at him. Bobby sighed, a half-smile crinkling the lines at the corners of his eyes.

            "Anyway," she continued, clearing her throat. She took another quick swig of beer, the liquid now only filling about a quarter of the bottle. "I was checking these demons out of Tennessee, and out of nowhere they took a hard left. Booked up here."

            "When?" asked Dean.

            "Yesterday morning."

            He let out a heavy breath, leaning back into the couch cushions. "When I busted out." His voice was grave, and Bobby looked at him sideways. "You think these demons are here because of you?" he asked the younger man. Sam cocked her eyebrows. "But why?" she added.

            Dean scrubbed his hand across his face, shifting the skin. "I don't know," he huffed. "Some badass demon drags me out, and now this? It's gotta be connected somehow."

            "How you feelin', anyway?" said Bobby in response. Dean gazed at him blankly for a moment. "I'm a little hungry," he replied. Sam smiled at her knees. "No," Bobby grunted, rolling his eyes. "I mean, do you feel like yourself? Anything strange, or... or different?"

            "Or demonic?" finished Dean, annoyed. "Bobby, how many times do I have to prove I'm me?" Sam glanced between the two men, curious. She could see the faint cut on Dean's forearm where he'd surely slit himself with a knife to prove his humanity to Bobby. As far as she could tell, he was Dean, and that put an enormous peace over her.

            Bobby looked skeptical. "Yeah. Well, listen. No demon's letting you loose out of the goodness of their hearts. They've gotta have something nasty planned." Dean put his hands on his knees and shoved himself off the couch with a groan. "Well, I feel fine," he replied curtly.

            Sam held up her hand to stop them. "Look, guys, we don't know what they're planning. We've got a pile of questions and no shovel. We need help."

            "I know a psychic," Bobby supplied. "Holed up a few hours from here. Something this big, maybe she's heard the other side talking." Dean nodded. "It's worth a shot," he conceded. Bobby got to his feet and crossed to the door, saying over his shoulder, "I'll be right back." A second later, there was kind of an _oof!_ sound, and Sam stood up, peering out the open door.

            "Bobby?" she called. He reappeared in the doorway, rubbing his elbow poutily. On his left was a young man in an unattractively vomit-green collared shirt. The cap on his head had a photo of a slice of pizza stitched into it, and in his arms was a flat square box. Sam laughed to herself. "Um, pizza for Jake?" the boy said uncertainly. Sam pointed to Dean at her side, signaling that he was Jake, and Bobby took the pizza box from him. Dean shot her a look that was half between irritation and amusement. "Watch where you're goin' next time, kid," Bobby grumbled.

            The young man straightened and held his hand out expectantly. Sam raised her eyebrows; Bobby turned to her and asked, "Did Jake use cash or credit?"

            "Credit."

            With a smug smile, Bobby looked back at the delivery boy. He slapped his hand, hard, and said, "Have a nice night, son." And he walked out of the room, pizza in hand. Dean chuckled under his breath as the young man went from looking confused, to annoyed, and then defeated. He stalked away from the threshold.


	5. For The First Time

                   Dean made to follow after Bobby, but Sam touched his arm and he stopped, looking at her. She said quietly, "You probably want this back." She reached under her collar and touched cool metal. Wrapping her fingers around it, she pulled the necklace over her head and pressed it into his hand. The moment it left her grasp, she felt colder, but the look on Dean's face was worth it. He stared at the little amulet, the one she had given him nearly eighteen years ago as a Christmas present. His face scrunched up a bit. Sam could have sworn she saw tears brimming in his eyes.

            "Thanks," he said under his breath. After a moment, he met her gaze, and Sam felt a newfound understanding fill the space between them. She placed her hand on his upper arm gently, partly to be comforting, and partly because she still could not fully believe he was standing there in front of her. She was half worried that he was not, that this was just another one of the dreams she had when she actually was able to sleep. She feared this was just another dream that had her shaking and sobbing when she awoke in the middle of the night, scrabbling for the hand of someone who was not there. One of the dreams that had her desperately aching for the feel of someone lying next to her, whispering that she was alright, it was just a dream, and he was right there. But she could feel him, feel his skin and the solidity of the fabric he wore and the heat that radiated off his living, breathing body, and she knew this was different. It was like waking up from a nightmare to find that it was sunny outside. Everything was now in sharper focus, as if the world had been blurred for the past four months of her life. Colors seemed brighter, more vibrant, than they had been before. The energy that surrounded her on all sides hummed melodically, creating a beautiful symphony that she had not heard until now. And no other green on the planet mattered, except the indescribable green that made up his irises.

            She smiled softly. "Don't mention it." Dean slipped the amulet around his neck, and she turned to reach for her jacket. As she pulled her arms through the sleeves, she asked, "Hey, Dean? What was it like?"

            He hesitated for a moment. "What, Hell?" She nodded. His hand reached up and rubbed the back of his neck as he answered. "I don't know. I-I must have blacked it out. Don't remember a damn thing."

            Sam nodded again, swallowing hard. "Well, thank God for that," she told him seriously. He gave a weak chuckle. "Yeah." Without another word passing between them, they left the motel room, Sam hastily grabbing her duffel bag of clothes and the backpack she carried everywhere. She also, due to an amused look from Dean as she approached him, remembered to slip on her sneakers and a pair of jeans, seeing as she was shoe- and pant-less. Bobby met them at the stairs that led to the parking lot, standing near his beat up old truck with his key in hand. The pizza box sat on the hood of it, and a small circle of condensed steam was surrounding it. "She's about four hours down the interstate," he told the pair, referring to the psychic. Then he grinned lopsidedly. "Try to keep up." He opened the box, grabbing three slices of the pizza, got in the car and started the engine. Dean snatched the box off the hood before he could drive off.

            "I assume you'll want to drive?" said Sam, pulling the keys to the 1967 Chevy Impala parked nearby out of her pocket. She tossed them to Dean, who caught it in midair with the hand that did not hold the pizza. He laughed. "Oh, I almost forgot!" He strode up to the car, putting a hand on the hood. Lovingly he ran his hand across the shiny black metal. "Hey, sweetheart, did you miss me?" he crooned. Sam smirked a little, inwardly answering _Yes_ for the car, then took the pizza box from him and hopped into the passenger seat. She then dropped the square unceremoniously onto the backseat. Dean slid in a moment later; the door creaked familiarly as it shut. With gentle hands, he touched the wheel and smiled.

            Sam noticed him pause as he saw her iPod, which was plugged into the stereo. He gave it a dirty look. "What the hell is that?" he demanded, nodding toward it. Sam smiled, shaking her head. "That's an iPod jack."

            "You were supposed to take care of her, not douche her up!"

            "Dean, I thought it was _my car_."

            He sneered, then sighed, and shoved the key into the ignition. His steady hand turned the car on, the engine roaring to life and filling the air around them with the buzz of the vibration. The moment seemed wonderful, until the iPod picked up where it had left off the last time Sam drove the car. _Vision_ by Jason Manns played sedately in the speakers. Dean rolled his eyes and glared at her, looking pained. _"Really?"_ he said. Sam shrugged innocently, then winked at him. In one fluid motion, Dean ripped the iPod out of the jack and threw it violently in the backseat.

            Sam kept smiling.

            Dean followed Bobby's truck as he led them out of Pontiac and onto a two-lane highway. Sam was slightly surprised at how he seemed to have no trouble driving after his time away, but she quickly scolded herself internally for thinking that. Nothing would ever keep Dean from driving this car, physical or mental. _Even if he had no legs, he'd find a way to stay behind the wheel,_ she thought with a grin.

            They had been riding in silence for about twenty minutes when he suddenly said, "There's still one thing that's bothering me." Sam glanced at him, curious. "Yeah?" she replied.

            "Yeah. The night that I bit it. Or... _got_ bit." He laughed at his own joke. Sam rolled her eyes. "How did you make it out? I thought Lilith was gonna kill you."

            Sam figured he would ask this sooner or later. "Well, she tried. She couldn't."

            "What do you mean, she _couldn't?_ "

            "I mean she fired this, like, burning light at me and... it didn't leave a scratch." She touched her arm instinctively, feeling the realness of her own body almost as reassurance. "Like I was immune or something."

            Dean's eyes snapped her way. "Immune?" She nodded, her face solemn. "Yeah. I'm not sure who was more surprised, her or me." With a shudder she thought back to that night. After Dean was ripped apart by the invisible hellhounds, the woman Lilith had possessed had turned to Sam with a sort of savage pleasure. She had thrown her hand out in front of her, and out of her skin burst an impeccably bright white aura, meant to obliterate Sam completely. And it should have, as far as Sam could tell, but nothing happened. An image of Lilith's shocked, scared face flashed in front of Sam's eyes, and she let herself smile. "She left pretty fast after that."

            "Huh." Dean smacked his lips together, and she could tell he was thinking. A muscle in his jaw jumped slightly. "What about Ruby?" he inquired after a minute. "Where's she?"

            "Dead," Sam replied at once. "For now." The lie came quickly, easily, and she did not have time to feel guilty about it, because she noticed Dean's demeanor change. He bit his lip, as if he was nervous to ask his next question. Sam unconsciously braced herself.

            "So you've been using your... um... freaky ESP stuff?"

            She scoffed breathily, looking away from him and out the window at the flickering scenery. It was dark and desolate outside. "No," she told him. "You sure about that?" he prompted doubtingly. Sam furrowed her eyebrows and stared at him. "Well, I mean," he continued, "now that you've got... immunity, whatever the hell that is... I'm just wondering what other kind of weirdo crap you've got going on."

            "Nothing, Dean." Sam sighed. "Look, you didn't want me to go down that road, so I didn't go down that road. It was practically your dying wish."

            He looked at her for a moment, his gaze prodding, like she was a word he did not know the meaning of. As if she was a piece of paper and he could not decipher the writing. Sam felt small beneath his eye, wondering if this was what it was like to be an insect under a microscope. "Yeah," he said, turning his focus back on the road. "Well, let's keep it that way."

            She had the overwhelming urge to sit and brood for the rest of the car ride, but then Dean's eyes shone in the aftereffect of a passing streetlight, and the beam reflected off his electrifying greens, and she fell silent. Just watching him. A few minutes passed when he glanced her way, apparently sensing her stare.

            "What?" he asked. Sam joggled her head slightly, trying to liberate herself from the chokingly trancelike state she was in. "Nothing," she replied. One of his eyebrows arched upward. "I just... I'm glad you're back, Dean."

            Something settled in the air, then. To Sam, it felt like an impossible blend of heaviness and weightlessness. It was a sensation equivalent to the frame of time just before dawn, when the sky is just starting to turn that dusty golden hue, and everything seems to be waking up gracefully. The silence was the tranquility of waves rolling onto weathered shores, and as stimulated as a surge of energy charging toward a conductor. It was the calm summer breeze that seemed to scatter rays of light about the earth, and the quiet rustle of wings, and the flash of lightning that signaled a world-quaking boom of sound, and she loved how beautifully, terrifyingly vivid the colors of life now seemed.

            A touch, softer than its calloused appearance would portray, skimmed across the skin on her hand, and she looked down. Dean's fingers entwined themselves around her own. He had not taken his eyes off the road in front of them, but she could see his expression had changed. The apprehension had evaporated, leaving nothing but an overwhelmingly unfamiliar peace on his face. "Me too, Sammy."


	6. Be Careful, Little Lion Man

                   The rest of the drive was silent, apart from Sam remembering the box of pizza in the backseat and offering a few slices to Dean. At some point, she drifted off to sleep, and the next thing she knew, he was tapping her shoulder. She opened her eyes groggily, glaring at him. Dean just grinned. "We're here, sleepyhead. Get your ass up and at 'em."

            As he climbed out of the car, he planted a quick kiss on her cheek. The contact made every nerve in Sam's body catch fire as if they were doused in kerosene. With one finger, she touched where his lips had brushed her skin, and some unknown creature in her chest flapped around violently. If one thing was certain, she was definitely awake now.

            She joined Bobby and Dean outside the row of buildings they had parked in front of. There was no sign anywhere advertising a psychic, which Sam pegged as a bit odd, but Bobby seemed sure. He knocked on the maroon-colored door a few times, and after a couple seconds, a woman opened it. Immediately Sam thought she was beautiful: most likely around her thirties with long black hair, bright green eyes, a friendly smile, and creamy white skin. The woman grinned widely.

            "Bobby!" she yelled, and wrapped her arms around the older man. She lifted him briefly off the ground. Dean looked at Sam, his eyebrows raised as if he was impressed. Sam shrugged. "You're a sight for sore eyes," Bobby chuckled, patting the woman's arm as she released him. With a wink, she turned to Sam and Dean, and looked them up and down appraisingly.

            "So, these are the kids?" she confirmed. Bobby nodded. "Sam, Dean," he said, "this is Pamela Barnes, best damn psychic in the state." Pamela gave him a confident half-smile, flattered. Dean nodded his head once, and Sam knew he was about to start flirting. "Hey," he greeted her with his trademark smirk.

            Pamela pressed her lips together, smiling thoughtfully. "Mm-mm-mm. Dean Winchester. Out of the fire and back in the frying pan, huh? Makes you a rare individual."

            "If you say so."

            "Come on in," Pamela added to Sam and Bobby, stepping aside to let them through. Sam followed Bobby, and Dean followed her; Pamela shut the door behind them. She began to lead them into a room in the back. Bobby asked her, "So, you hear anything?"

            "Well," she replied, pulling a curtain to the side, "I Ouija'd my way through a dozen spirits. No one seems to know who broke your boy out, or why."  Bobby nodded. "So what's next?" he inquired. Sam glanced at Dean, and distinguished his mask of indifference hiding what he was thinking at the moment. His muscles contracted slightly under his shirt. She sighed inwardly.

            Pamela regarded Bobby's question for a moment, then said, "A séance, I think. See if we can see who did the deed." She winked, but he did not look relieved. "You're not gonna... summon the damn thing _here?_ " His voice could only be described as afraid, but hidden under slight irritation. Sam recognized it as what she called _manly fear_.

            "No," laughed Pamela good-naturedly. "I just want to get a sneak peek at it." She seemed to think a bit. Conspiratorially, she added, "Like a crystal ball, without the crystal."

            "I'm game," Dean said. He threw a wink to Sam, which went unnoticed by the other two. Pamela pulled a black tablecloth from under a circular table in the middle of the close room, and spread it out with one neat flourish. Drawn on the cloth was a devil's trap; Sam recognized the symbols at once, and looked at it warily. Dean appeared somewhat chary as well. He cocked his head to the side as Pamela squatted in front of a short cabinet against the wall. Her shirt rode up a bit, revealing a tattoo scrawled in elegant cursive on her lower back. Sam saw as well, and her heart dropped into her stomach at the sight of the familiar name. _Jesse forever._

"Who's Jesse?" Dean inquired, then inhaled sharply. He looked sideways at Sam, sympathy written on his features. Pamela, oblivious to their wordless interaction, laughed, "Well, it wasn't forever."

            Dean shrugged. "His loss." She turned to look at him as she straightened up again, a few pillar candles balanced in her hands. With a smirk, she told him, "Might be your gain." She winked, then went about setting up the table for the séance. Dean spun around to Sam, his eyes wide. "Dude, I am _so_ in."

            Sam chuckled lowly. "Yeah, she's gonna eat you alive."

            "Hey, I just got out of jail. _Bring it._ "

            Pamela passed by them once more, and this time she gave Sam a knowing smile. "You're invited too, grumpy." Sam shook her head at her feet as Dean spluttered incoherently for a second. "You are _not_ invited," he told her, pointing his finger in her face. Sam laughed openly, which earned a suspicious look from Bobby. Before he could say anything, Pamela returned with a lighter and motioned them all to sit around the table. She lit the candles as they each pulled up chairs, then seated herself.

            "Right," she sighed. "Take each other's hands."

            They did so.

            "And I need to touch something our mystery monster touched," she added. Sam wracked her brain for a moment, thinking about what it could have held onto as it pulled Dean from Hell. Dean jumped beside her, breaking her concentration, and Sam saw him turn red. "Whoa, well, he didn't touch me _there_ ," he said uncomfortably. Pamela's hand resurfaced and grasped Dean's. "My mistake," she said with a smirk. It did not take much for Sam to understand what had happened, but she let it leave her mind. Dean glanced around the table, his expression nervous, then removed his unbuttoned outer shirt. He pushed the left sleeve of his t-shirt up.

            On his left shoulder was a violently pink burn. It had scarred over, and the skin had risen. It was in the perfect shape of a hand. There were four fingers and a thumb, connected to a moderately-sized palm, like he had been branded by a regular human's touch. Sam stared in horror, her own blood running cold at the thought of how painful it must have felt. She flicked her eyes over to Bobby, who did not look surprised. Dean caught her gaze and seemed to be trying to communicate an apology without speaking.

            Pamela laid her hand on the brand. "Okay," she breathed, and shut her eyes. The other three did the same as she began to chant. "I invoke, conjure and command you, appear unto me before this circle." She said it three times before Sam heard something like static, and peeked her eyes open. The television had flicked on.

            "I invoke, conjure and command - Castiel?"

            Sam's head snapped toward Pamela, shock flooding her veins. She had never heard the word; Pamela pronounced it _Cas-tee-ell_. She shivered before she remembered she had to have her eyes closed. She shut them as Pamela spoke again. "No, sorry, Castiel. I don't scare easy."

            "Castiel?" said Dean's voice.

            "Its name," replied Pamela's. "It's whispering to me, warning me to turn back." The room around them was suddenly filled with white noise, loud and impossible to ignore. The static somehow increased in volume. The table began to quake under their arms, and Sam's eyes involuntarily flew open. The first thing she saw was Dean's steely greens staring back at her, wide with fear. All the while, Pamela continued her chant.

            Bobby looked around apprehensively as the white noise intensified almost unbearably. The rattling table's legs were creaking in a dangerous manner. "Maybe we should stop!" he said over the din.

            "I've almost got it!" Pamela shouted back, her eyebrows scrunched. She tilted her head up toward the ceiling. "I command you, show me your face! _Show me your face now!_ "

            Without warning, the flames in the candles flared up several feet into the air. Pamela released Dean and Bobby's hands and began to scream. Her eyes shot open, and Sam saw they were filled with white-hot fire. She jumped out of her chair as Pamela collapsed out of her own, clutching at her eyes. Then, just as abruptly as they had come, the noise and flames died out.

            Bobby had managed to catch her before she hit the floor, and he lowered her slowly to the carpet. "Call 9-1-1!" he said, panicked. Dean scrambled out of his chair and into the next room, and Sam crouched over Pamela and Bobby. She was conscious, but bleeding and very badly burned. After a moment, her eyelids slid open again to reveal gaping black empty sockets. The skin around them was charred, and the room smelled of smoke and burnt flesh.

            "I can't see," sobbed Pamela, though no tears came out. "I can't see. Oh, God."

            Sam could hear Dean's voice in the next room, explaining to the operator where they were. She shivered violently. She had known that this being - whatever it was - had to have been powerful to free him from Hell, but the damage it had done to Pamela... Whoever, and whatever, this Castiel was, he was not to be reckoned with.

            But he would not get away with hurting Pamela this way.


	7. Keeping Secrets

                   The pretty brunette waitress smiled at Dean as he finished giving her his order. "Be up in a jiff," she said cheerily. Sam, with her cellphone pressed to her ear, walked back into the restaurant. Bobby's grave voice finished his sentence, and she said, "You bet." The soft _click_ of Bobby's receiver sounded on the other end of the line. Sam sat across from Dean in the booth, shoving her phone back in her pocket.

            "What'd Bobby say?" he inquired. Guilt shone brightly in his eyes, and Sam wanted nothing more than to grab his hand and explain exactly why this wasn't his fault. But she knew better than to try to reason with Dean when he felt responsible for something, so she simply sighed and answered the question. "Pam's stable. And out of ICU."

            "And blind, because of us."

            "And we still have _no_ idea who we're dealing with." Sam slumped back into the booth. "That's not entirely true," Dean said, wagging his index finger. Sam made a face. "No?" He leaned forward with his arms on the table. "We got a name," he told her. "Castiel, or whatever. With the right mumbo-jumbo, we could summon him. Bring him right to us."

            "You're crazy!" she said, appalled. "Absolutely not."

            "We'll work him over," Dean said. "I mean, after what he did?" Sam shook her head firmly. "Pam took a peek at him and her eyes _burned_ _out of her skull_ ," she emphasized. "And you want to have a face-to-face?"

            "You got a better idea?"

            "Yes, as a matter of fact, I do. I followed some demons to town, right?" Dean raised his eyebrows at her. "Okay," he prompted. "So," Sam continued, "we go find them. Someone's gotta know something about something."

            Just then, the waitress reappeared with two plates of steaming apple pie, her nametag shining momentarily. It read, _Hello, my name is Megan._ She set the slices of pie on the table in front of the two. "Thank you," said Sam smilingly. Dean grabbed a fork and immediately shoved a bite into his mouth. Megan, instead of going back to work, pulled a chair out from a nearby table, and plopped down at the end of the booth. She crossed one leg in front of the other comfortably. Dean looked at her, smirking. "You angling for a tip?" he chuckled.

            "I'm sorry," she said. "I thought you were looking for us." She blinked once, and when her eyes reopened, they were pitch-black through and through. Sam straightened her back, tensing. The eyes of a uniformed man sitting at the bar at the other end of the diner also went black, and as did the cook's. The first man went over to the front door, turned the lock, and stood in front of it, his arms crossed. Dean looked at Sam out of the corner of his eye.

            The waitress's eyes flicked back to their original brown shade. She gave Dean a grin. "Hmm. Dean. To Hell and back. Aren't you a lucky duck?"

            "That's me," Dean chuckled coldly. Megan leaned closer to him. "So you get to just stroll out of the pit, huh?" she demanded. "Tell me. What makes you so damn special?"

            Dean shrugged nonchalantly. "I like to think it's because of my perky nipples."

            Sam rolled her eyes.

            "I don't know," he told the demon waitress. "Wasn't my doing. I don't know who pulled me out." Megan nodded, a sneer painted on her young face. "Right. You don't." Her voice was dripping with hatred, and Dean noticed. Sam saw his shoulders square slightly. "No, I don't," he repeated. Once more Megan put her head closer to the table, her eyes narrowing dangerously. "Lying's a sin, you know."

            "I'm not lying," he said. "But I'd like to find out, so if you wouldn't mind enlightening me, Flo...?"

            "Mind your tone with me, boy," snapped Megan. "I'll drag you back to Hell myself."

            Sam shifted in her seat, ready to attack should any of the demons make a move toward him. She kept her eyes trained on the waitress and threw as much sharpness into her gaze as possible. Dean held up his hand, and Sam stilled, settling back onto the booth bench reluctantly. There was something in his eyes that she was not used to seeing: total confidence in the situation.

            "No, you won't," he told the demon. She scoffed. "No?" He angled his body so that he faced her, and Sam could see the hint of a smirk edging over his mouth. "No," he said again. "Because if you were, you would have done it already. Fact is, you don't know who cut me loose. And you're just as spooked as we are, and you're looking for answers. Well, maybe it was some turbo-charged spirit. Or, uh, _Godzilla_." He gave a single, curt chuckle. Megan glared at the floor, her lips pursed. "Or some big, bad boss demon. I'm guessing, at your pay grade, they don't tell you _squat._ Because whoever it is, they want me out. And they're a lot stronger than you. So go ahead, send me back. But don't come crawling to me when they show up on your front doorstep with some Vaseline and a fire hose."

            Sam stared at the other two demons as they shifted uneasily, and she knew Dean was right. They couldn't do anything to him. Megan's eyes were mere slits in her face. "I am going to reach down your throat and rip out your lungs," she growled.

            Dean leaned toward her, a challenge gleaming in his eyes. Before Sam could comprehend what was happening, he had punched the waitress square in the jaw. The sound of his knuckles connecting with her flesh echoed in the near-empty diner. She took the hit without a noise. He threw another right hook, and she still did nothing but glare. The fury in her gaze was undeniable. "That's what I thought," said Dean. Then he jerked his head at the door. "Let's go, Sam."

            They stood, and the demon still sat there, fuming. As if in afterthought, Dean pulled a roll of cash from his pocket and carefully peeled off a ten dollar bill. He held it up, then dropped it, like it was an insult. "For the pie," he hissed. Sam followed his lead as he approached the demon guarding the door and pushed him aside, unlocking the door himself.

            When they got outside, they crossed the street quickly, both of them incredibly tense. "Holy crap, that was close," Dean laughed. Sam sighed, something like relief enveloping her chest. Her mind was racing, and she wanted to go back into the diner and destroy each and every one of those monsters. "We're not just going to leave them in there, are we?" she asked incredulously as Dean stalked up to his car.

            "Well, _yeah_ ," he replied. "There's three of them, probably more, and we've only got one knife between us." He gestured to Sam's jacket, where the knife was tucked safely in her pocket. Ruby's dagger had certainly come in handy since she had given it to them, because it was the only thing knife in existence that could kill a demon. It cut out much of the wasted time it took attempting to exorcise them.

            "I've been killing a lot more demons than that lately," Sam said quietly. Dean grinned at her. "Not anymore," he told her in a cheery sort of voice. "The smarter Winchester's back in town." Sam rolled her eyes and caught him by the sleeve of his shirt. "Dean, we've got to take 'em," she insisted. "They are dangerous."

            "They're _scared_ , Sammy, okay? Scared of whatever had the juice to yank me out. We're dealing with a bad mofo here. One job at a time." He looked at her for a moment longer, apparently trying to make sure she understood. Sam breathed deeply and nodded.

            That evening, as Dean slept on the couch, she would sneak out of the motel room. She would return to that diner and keep an eye on the demons inside. She would not be there when the white noise that had rung out in Pamela's home showed itself once more, like it was following Dean everywhere he went. Sam would not be there when Dean awoke to the earsplitting sound, when the glass of all the mirrors and windows in the room would shatter, when Bobby would charge into the room to see Dean convulsing, his ears leaking blood.

            Bobby hauled Dean into his truck and drove away from the motel, the younger man wiping the blood from his face with a towel. "How you doin', kid?" he asked, peering at Dean worriedly. Dean chuckled. "Aside from the church bells ringing in my head, just peachy." Bobby rolled his eyes and refocused on the road as Dean pulled his flip phone from his pocket and pressed speed dial one. Within the minute, Sam's voice greeted him on the other end.

            "Hey," she said. "What are you doing?" inquired Dean, trying not to sound too accusing. "Couldn't sleep," she answered. "Went to get a burger."

            "In _my_ car?"

            "Force of habit. Sorry. What are you doing up?"

            "Well, uh, Bobby's back. We're going to grab a beer." Bobby looked at Dean, a bit shocked, and Dean held up a finger to signal him to stay quiet. "Alright," Sam's voice said. "Well, spill some for me, huh?"

            Dean smiled. "Done. Catch you later." He snapped the phone shut, guilt washing through his veins for a moment, and immediately Bobby pounced on him. "Why the hell didn't you tell her?" he demanded. "Because she would have just tried to stop us," replied Dean shortly. "From what?" Bobby scoffed.

            "Summoning this thing."

            Again, Bobby glared at him, shock etched in all the lines of his face. Dean continued, "It's time we faced it head-on." Bobby shook his head. "You can't be serious!" he protested. "As a heart attack," said Dean. "It's high noon, baby."

            "Well, we don't know _what_ it is. It could be a demon; it could be anything!"

            "That's why we've got to be ready for anything." He pulled Ruby's demon knife from inside his jacket and waved it a little. It shimmered slightly. "We've got the big-time magic knife, you've got an arsenal in the trunk..."

            Bobby shook his head again, and when he spoke, his tone was gravelly and worried. "This is a bad idea." Dean sighed and looked at him. "Yeah, I couldn't agree more, but what other choice do we have?"

            "We could choose _life!_ "

            Dean rolled his eyes irritably. "Bobby, whatever this is, whatever it wants, it's after me," he told the older man surely. The latter let out a breath of air that he seemed to have been holding. "That much we know, right? I've got no place to hide. I can either get caught with my pants down again, or we can make our stand."

            "Dean, we could use Sam on this."

            "No," he replied quickly. "No, she's better off where she is. At least she's safe."


	8. Do I Wanna Know?

                   Back in town, Sam was creeping into Johnny Mac's Diner, where she and Dean had encountered the demons earlier that day. A part of her felt bad for lying to him, but she kept that part well-hidden behind concentration. She slipped her lock-picking tool back into her shirt pocket once she had gained entrance. A song was playing softly on the jukebox inside. The sound sent a chill up her spine. She looked down at her feet just in time to keep from tripping over a body. It was the demon-possessed cook, lying face-down on the floor, his hands bloody. Sam crouched down and turned the man over; just as she thought, he was dead. His eyes were burned out of their sockets, and there was drying blood caked on his cheeks. Sam stood, unease gnawing at her stomach.

            A figure suddenly tackled her from behind. Sam wriggled under the weight and managed to flip the unknown attacker over so that she was sitting on top of it. Blindly she punched at where she assumed its face was, feeling her fists connect again and again. Then she heaved herself off the figure and shoved them into the wall at the far end of the restaurant. She blinked in the low light, and realized who she was looking at: Megan, the waitress. Her eye sockets, too, were nothing but burnt black holes, fresh blood trickling down her face.

            She looked both terrifying and terrified.

            "Your eyes," Sam gasped. The waitress lifted her chin up a bit and spat, "I could smell your soul a mile away." She then let out a strangled sob, clamping her hand over her mouth. Sam took a steadying breath. "You saw it." It was not a question.

            Megan laughed icily through her nonexistent tears. "I saw it."

            "What was it?"

            The woman rocked back and forth on her bottom, dryly sobbing though no tears could leak from her empty sockets. "It's the end," she cried hoarsely. "We're dead. We're all dead." Sam stepped closer to her, insisting, "What did you see?" The demon stopped crying and raised her head up so that, if she could see, she would be glaring daggers at Sam. "Go to hell."

            Sam straightened herself. "Funny," she said with a cold smile. "I was going to say the same thing to you." She stepped back and firmly planted her feet on the floor, shutting her eyes in concentration. Extending her right hand toward the demon, she focused all her energy on the soul of the demon that was inside the young woman before her. She heard a faint choking sound, constricted heaving, and opened her eyes to see the girl vomiting up black smoke into her hands. In seconds, the body of the waitress collapsed to the tile floor, and the demon dissipated, slinking back to Hell.

            Taking quick breaths, Sam swallowed hard and approached the waitress's body. She put two fingers on the side of her neck, feeling for the steady thump of a heartbeat, the throb of a pulse. When she found none, she sighed in disappointment. "Damn it," she cursed under her breath.

            The kitchen door to her right slammed open, and a woman sauntered out. She had long dark brown hair, an angular face, and was very pretty. Sam looked up at her, unsurprised by her presence. In the back of her mind, she was even gladder now that Dean did not know she was there than she had been before. If he knew she was lying about this girl being alive...

            "Getting pretty slick there, Sam," Ruby commented proudly. "Better all the time."

            Sam gave her a smoldering look. Then she glanced back down at the corpse at her feet, her face falling. "What the hell is going on around here, Ruby?" she asked, folding her arms over her chest. Ruby shook her head. "I wish I knew."

            "We were thinking some high-level demon pulled Dean out of Hell."

            "No way, Sam," the demon girl replied at once. "Human souls don't just walk out of Hell and back into their bodies easy. The sky bleeds; the ground quakes. It's _cosmic_. No demon can swing that. Not Lilith, not anybody."

            "Then what can?"

            Ruby met Sam's eye with unsureness. "Nothing I've ever seen before."


	9. Restless

                   Some miles away, Dean was organizing a plethora of equipment on a small table. He and the older man had driven to a dank abandoned warehouse just outside the town in the hopes that it would be the least likely candidate for any disturbances. Dean's heart was beating rapidly in his chest, though nothing had happened yet. They had not even begun the summoning ritual, but he was already nervous. He covered the sensation behind tedious movements and discreet deep breathing. Still, he could not seem to shake the growing feeling that this was one of his worst ideas. A few feet behind him, Bobby straightened up from his crouching position, shaking the white spray-paint can as he did. At his feet was an intricately drawn symbol; the walls and ceiling of this place were scrawled with more, some simple and some irritatingly difficult to draw.

            Dean turned his head so he would be able to see Bobby out of the corner of his eye. "That's a hell of a project you got going there," he quipped. Bobby exhaled, clearly allowing the young man's sarcasm to slide with some reluctance. "Traps and talismans from every faith on the globe," he said to Dean lowly, then nodded down at the table. "How about you?"

            "Stakes," Dean began, pointing at each weapon in turn, "iron, silver, salt, magic knife. I mean, we're pretty much set to catch and kill anything I've ever heard of."

            "This is still a bad idea," growled Bobby under his breath. Dean snapped, "Yeah, Bobby, I heard you the first ten times." The older man's eyes narrowed as he stared down at the weaponry. Dean let himself scan the items one last time before he added, "Now, what do you say we ring the dinner bell?"

            With a shadow of hesitance, Bobby nodded. He strode a few feet away to where another desk stood, laden down with different spellcasting ingredients. Reaching into a little metal bowl he pinched some dark-colored powder between his fingers. Then he walked back over to where the giant trap in the middle of the floor was painted, and set another larger bowl, this one made of wood, in the middle of it. He sprinkled the powder into the bowl, and it began to smoke.

            Dean watched, arms folded tightly, as Bobby began to chant in Latin, and the smoke billowed higher.


	10. Wrong for the Right Reasons

                   Inside the diner, Ruby swirled around on her heel to look at Sam. "So," she said. "Million dollar question. Are you going to tell Dean about what we're doing here?"

            "Yeah," Sam replied at once. _Maybe a little too quickly_ , she realized, because Ruby's eyebrows shot up on her forehead. "I've just got to figure out the right way to say it." The demon girl gave Sam a look tinged with amusement and disbelief. Sam felt annoyance light itself into a small flame in the pit of her stomach. "Look, I just need time, okay? That's all."

            Ruby shook her head, saying, "Sam, he's going to find out. And if it's not from you, he'll be pissed." Sam laughed dryly. "He's going to be pissed anyway," she told her truthfully. "I mean, he's so hardheaded about this psychic stuff. He'd just try and stop me."

            "Look... Maybe I'll just step back for a while."

            "Ruby, you - "

            "I mean, I'm not exactly in Dean's fan club, here, right?" Ruby asked, her eyebrows arched questioningly. "But he is your best friend, and I'm not going to come between you."

            Sam ran a hand through her hair, sighing. "I don't know if what I'm doing is right," she said seriously. "Hell, I don't even know if I trust you." Ruby's eyes widened, and she rolled them, her voice dripping with sarcasm. "Thanks."

            "But what I do know," Sam went on, as if Ruby had not spoken, "is that I'm saving people. And stopping demons. And that feels good." The demon gave a weak attempt at a smile, probably meant to encourage the other girl. "I want to keep going," said Sam surely. Something painfully sharp poked at her heart as Ruby nodded, impressed.

            Sam _would_ use her power and successfully spare the human vessel. She would save them. She had to.


	11. You Don't Scare Me

            Dean kicked his legs like a child on a swing as he sat on one of the desks in the warehouse. Bobby was seated on the other, staring at his hands. They had been like this for a good fifteen minutes after Bobby had performed the summoning. On top of the ever-present unease that had found a home in Dean's heart, another feeling was emerging. Fright.

            He did not know what this thing could be. All he knew was its name: Castiel. _Cas-tee-ell_. Unlike any name he'd ever heard. Everything about the entity that saved him was unusual. It could burn the eyes out of anyone who looked at it. There was unmatched power that it possessed that allowed it to grab onto Dean and pull him from the pit of Hell, rescuing him from an eternity of torture.

            _Torture._ The word set off ugly, low-pitched little bells in his head. He could still feel the iron chains as they bit into the skin of his feet, the muscly place between his shoulder blades and neck, his sides. The spots where they were attached to him tingled uncomfortably, as if the mere thought of that place could enable the chains to reanimate. He closed his eyes, rubbing them with the heels of his palms, and could see the endless darkness around him, hear the screams of pain from the other burning souls. He felt his body being yanked in a hundred different directions, and could sense every razor-sharp stroke as someone took a blade to his skin. The sound of flesh ripping, the coppery scent of blood, and the overwhelming disappointment when he found himself whole once more, all enveloped him within the span of a second. A question popped into his mind, and as soon as it appeared, he wanted it gone. The words fashioned a rope, weaving the letters together, that wrapped around his soul, squeezing the last dregs of life out of him horribly slowly. _An eternity of being tortured, or doing the torturing?_

            "Are you sure you did the ritual right?" inquired Dean, looking over at Bobby. He blinked back the sensation that his memories of Hell brought on him, and was filled to the brim with a new motivation to discover who - or what - saved him. Bobby glared. "Sorry," Dean chuckled, though there was no feeling of humor within him. "Touchy-touchy, huh?"

            As if on cue, the roof of the warehouse began to tremble, causing the walls to emit a thunderous noise. Dust fluttered from the stone that surrounded them. Dean leapt off the desk at the same time as Bobby. The two men grabbed a pair of shotguns and took positions at the far ends of the room. "Wishful thinking, but maybe it's just the wind," quipped Dean. Again, Bobby glared, but this time his eyes were telling him to shut up. Dean looked at the sliding barnlike door just as an explosion sounded.

            The door blew off its hinges and clashed to the cement floor deafeningly. Dean tensed, aiming the shotgun at the gaping hole where it used to be. His heart palpitated and quivered when the emptiness of the threshold was broken by a shadow. The silhouette of a man now stood there, backlit by the moonlight outside as he appeared, and after a very slight pause, he started to walk toward the two. His footsteps were light, his strides wide, slow and smooth, but there was an undeniable feeling of power in his movements. It was as if he commanded and received respect simply by being present. Dean's eyes swept over him, but he could distinguish no features in the exceptionally dim lighting. Briefly, he noticed the brand-like burn on his shoulder begin to throb. The lightbulbs on the ceiling shattered in a shower of sparks and rained down as the shadow passed under them. In the second of light as one flashed, Dean perceived a handsome face, his chin lightly stubbly, in a business suit and a brown trenchcoat.

            Without another moment's hesitation, Bobby and Dean opened fire on the entity. Dean watched at least twelve salt-filled bullets sink into the unknown man's chest, but he did not even stumble. The clothing he wore tore in circular places all about his body, fraying with the heat. He continued to walk toward them. As he neared two yards' distance, Dean inconspicuously picked up the demon-killing knife. The man came to a stop about four feet away.

            "Who are you?" Dean demanded. The stranger tilted his head to the side as he looked at the hunter, his lips parted slightly, and his eyes caught some unseen light. They were the brightest, most striking blues that Dean had ever seen. It was as if they could electrify someone by mere glance.

            "I am the one who gripped you tight and raised you from perdition," the man said. His voice was much lower than Dean had expected from his appearance. It was gravelly, and deep. Full of emotion and yet completely devoid of it, somehow simultaneously. The man straightened his head and peered at him, his gaze piercing. Like Dean was an interesting, study-worthy object. Dean felt his insides freeze, and could see Bobby sharply intake a breath behind the figure, his gun raised in his arms. "Yeah," Dean breathed, his hand gripping the knife a little tighter. "Thanks for that."

            He surged forward and plunged the knife deep into the entity's chest. Blood blossomed around the entry point, blooming like a crimson flower on the crisp white shirt beneath the business suit jacket. The other man looked down at it, curious, and Dean let go of the hilt, shocked. Nothing had flickered in the man's eyes, like a demon's would have, and he did not shriek in pain because of the silver in the knife. Dean's breath hitched as the unknown man grabbed the knife and carefully removed it from his chest. It was covered in red, dripping onto the concrete, and the wound was obviously fatal to anything normal. However, he gave off an air of unconcernedness as he dropped the knife and it clanged to the floor.

            Bobby leapt forward to attack. Without looking, the entity reached behind him and took hold of Bobby's gun, using it to swing the older man around to face him. In one fluid motion, he touched the tips of his index and middle fingers to Bobby's forehead. There was no flash of light, no scream of pain, but Bobby crumpled to the floor.

            "We need to talk, Dean," said the man, his deep voice serious. "Alone."

            Dean sprang toward Bobby and crouched beside him. He pressed his finger to the side of the older man's neck, desperately feeling for a pulse. After a moment, holding his breath, a steady thump met the skin of his finger, and Dean glared up at the man in the trenchcoat. "Your friend is alive," he said nonchalantly. He had migrated over to the wall, observing the sigils painted there.

            Getting to his feet, Dean looked at him, anger flaring in his joints. "Who are you?" he repeated himself lowly.

            "Castiel," said the other man, lightly touching a spray-painted talisman. A shiver ran through Dean's body but he hid it. "Yeah, I figured that much," he replied in what he hoped was an uninterested tone. "I mean _what_ are you?"

            Angling himself toward Dean again, Castiel gave him a look. Dean could not place it, exactly, but he knew the feeling that erupted in his veins in response. The sensation of being observed, as if he was a bug under a microscope. It was unsettling. But it was accompanied with something else, and it was something Dean was exceedingly unfamiliar with coming into contact with: trust. An insatiable, intangible, undeniable feeling of complete trust overcame him when he looked at Castiel's face. He tried to bury it, obliterate it, but he could not. For some reason, he was not intimidated, or suspicious, or even angry because of what Castiel had done to Bobby. No, the only nameable thing Dean could feel as the man in the trenchcoat met his eye once more was trust.

            "I am an angel of the Lord," said Castiel, his shocking blue eyes wide and unnaturally bright. Behind Castiel, through the now door-less threshold, Dean saw a flash of lightning illuminate the dirt. He planted his feet more firmly on the ground and stared at the other man, agape.

            "Get the hell out of here," he sighed, incredulous. "There's no such thing." And to the depths of his core, he believed that. No such thing as angels, no such thing as Heaven, no such thing as God. Dean Winchester had seen a lot in his thirty-two years: demons that were capable and willing to possess good people, witches that cursed those they were jealous of, ghosts that did far more than just go bump in the night, ghouls that fed on human flesh and took on their form, vampires and their nests, bigheaded psychics, and so much more. Anything that would show up in a nightmare, he had fought and most likely killed. He knew how to overpower, defeat and destroy the things that would send the most fearless man into apoplectic shock. Dean always thought that the Winchester family was particularly proficient in drawing the line between real and imaginary, between monster and human. What he fought was real. What he heard other hunters discuss was real. What he killed, or what killed others, was _real_. He could see it, and could feel it, so it existed. But never, once, had he heard anything about angels. Never before had he been presented with such irrefutable proof. Never had he been forced to reexamine what he always believed was true, that God did not truly exist outside of a church's delusion, that He was not who planned each day. At least, never until now.

            Castiel let out a small sigh, his eyes zigzagging away from Dean's. "This is your problem, Dean," he said lowly. "You have no faith." Dean was about to shoot back a witty, sarcastic response, but stopped short when he saw the other man shrug off his trenchcoat. Thunder clapped in the air around them, and Dean stood in awe as lightning lit the room with a cold, white-blue glow.

            Within the miniscule span of time where the room was illuminated, he saw ginormous, dark, shadow-like wings stretching out behind Castiel.

            The light disappeared, the image disappeared, but the truth remained. Dean was face-to-face with something he had never seen before, something that he thought never existed in the first place. For the first time, he did not know what his adversary's weaknesses were, or what its motive was, or how to kill it. For the first time, in a very, very long time, Dean was at the mercy of what stood before him.

            "Some angel you are," he managed to say, masking his fear behind a wall of indifference as Castiel put his coat back on. "You burned that poor woman's eyes out." The memory of Pamela's screams infiltrated Dean's mind, and he could almost smell the burnt skin. It made his stomach churn.

            Castiel raised his eyebrows. "I told her not to spy on my true form," he told Dean, almost as if he was defending himself. "It can be... overwhelming to humans. And so can my real voice. But, you already knew that," he added. As if they shared a thought process, Dean was reminded of the moments directly after he crawled out of the grave in which Sam had buried him. He remembered quite vividly how, in the service station a few miles away, he was bombarded with a high-pitched ringing that shattered the windows and glass all around him. It was the same sound he heard just hours before in the motel room, when Bobby found him clutching his bleeding ears on the floor. It sounded, to Dean, like someone banging on crystal with such consistency that it became one fluid noise. It was the quiet, bothersome sound one hears when their ears pop due to altitude, only amplified beyond comprehension. He wished to never hear it again.

            "You mean the gas station and the motel," he said to Castiel aloud. "That was you talking?" The angel nodded once, and Dean ran a hand through his own short-cropped hair. "Buddy," he laughed weakly, "next time, lower the volume."

            "That was my mistake," answered Castiel. Dean thought he seemed a little disappointed. "Certain people - special people - can perceive my true visage. I thought you would be one of them. I was wrong." Again, he dropped his eyes from Dean's.

            Dean said, sweeping his hand from Castiel's feet up to his face, "And what 'visage' are you in now, huh? What, holy tax accountant?"

            "This?" Castiel touched his chest, pulling the flap of his suit up a bit to peer at the white shirt beneath. It was stained with deep red blood. His eyebrows pulled together, whether in thought or confusion, Dean could not tell. "This is... a vessel."

            "You're possessing some poor bastard?" said Dean. He took a step toward the angel, his hand pointing at him accusingly. Castiel, his face stoic, straightened himself up. "He's a devout man," he told him with the same air of patience as a teacher explaining a relatively simple concept to a student. "He actually prayed for this."

            Dean stepped back again, casting a glance down at Bobby. "Well, I'm not buying what you're selling, so who are you, really?"

            Castiel tilted his head to the side again, giving Dean what Dean was beginning to think of as his signature look. His eyebrows furrowed, his mouth open slightly and frowning, his eyes somehow wide and squinted at the same time. "I told you," said Castiel, uncomprehending. Dean scoffed under his breath. "Right. And why would an angel rescue me from Hell?"

            "Good things _do_ happen, Dean."

            "Not in my experience."

            "What's the matter?" the angel inquired seriously, his face still scrunched up. Then, something like understanding passed over his curious blue eyes, and he said, "You don't think you deserve to be saved?"

            Dean breathed deeply through his nose, stifling the heavy feeling in his chest. "Why'd you do it?" he asked, this time more quietly, his voice low and demanding. The angel's expression changed from interested to businesslike once again. "Because God commanded it," replied Castiel simply. Dean's heart skipped a beat. "Because we have work for you."


	12. Falling To Pieces

                   Sam rolled her eyes, falling silent again and watching Dean pace from one side of Bobby's living room to the other. She tried to refocus on the heavy book in her lap, but kept sensing Dean's movement and getting distracted. The clutter of the room did not help, either; it only reminded her that they were no closer to figuring out this problem than they were yesterday.

            "Well, then tell me what else it could be," she said after a moment, countering Dean's last statement. He was adamant on proving that Castiel was not who he said he was. She heard Bobby huff as he turned a page from where he sat at his desk. "Look," Dean replied, "all I know is, I was not groped by an angel."

            Sam cringed slightly but did not look away from him. "Okay. But Dean, why do you think this Castiel guy would lie to you about it?"

            "Maybe he's some kind of demon. Demons lie."

            Bobby looked up, then, staring at Dean with a mixture of annoyance and tiredness on his face. Sam glanced at him momentarily before saying, "A demon who's immune to salt rounds and devil's traps? And... and Ruby's knife? Dean, _Lilith_ was scared of that thing!"

            "Don't you think," Dean replied stubbornly, exasperatedly, "that if angels were real, that some hunter would have seen one at some point? _Ever?_ "

            "Yeah. You just did, Dean."

            He glared at her as she shut the book and a cloud of dust burst from its pages. Sam knew that Dean was not the religious type, and she remembered all too clearly how he had reacted when she had told him she prayed. Like she was crazy, or delusional. She always thought that it was because he had seen so much evil that he did not believe there could be a higher good of any kind, but now, she was beginning to realize that maybe he didn't _want_ to believe. After all, there was so much proof in front of them that it was overwhelming. Dean had seen the power that this thing possessed. And _something_ had to have pulled him from Hell. What better than an angel?

            Dean raked a hand over his face, finally stopping his pacing and standing in front of her. "I'm just trying to come up with a theory here, okay?" Sam looked up at him, sighing. "Dean, we _have_ a theory."

            "Yeah, one with a little less fairy dust, please."

            Sam stood up and put her hands on her hips. She had a few inches on Dean, and it helped her to speak to him calmly and firmly, somehow. He always hated that she was taller than him. The memory of them playfully arguing about it as kids almost brought a smile to her lips. Almost. "Okay, look, I'm not saying we know for sure," she told him. "I'm just saying that I think we - "

            "That's the point!" interrupted Dean, throwing his hands up. "We _don't_ know for sure. So I'm not going to believe that this thing is a freaking 'angel of the Lord' just because it says so!" Sam opened her mouth to shoot back a reply, but Bobby's voice cut over her unspoken words. "Are you two chuckleheads gonna keep debating religion, or do you want to come over here and look at this?"

            Dean and Sam looked at him, then each other, and silently went to his side. Sam peered over Bobby's shoulder at the books spread out in front of him on the desk. One of them was written in Latin, another in what she thought was Greek, and one a language she had never seen. The one Bobby had his finger on, thankfully, read in English. "I got stacks of lore," he told them doggedly. "Biblical, pre-Biblical - some of it's in damn cuneiform. And it all says an angel can snatch a soul from the pit."

            "What else?" inquired Dean, staring at the page. Bobby looked at him. "What else what?" he replied, his graying brown eyebrows pulled together and creating a wrinkle in the skin between them. "What else could do it?" Dean said. The older man seemed to hold in a scoff. "Airlift your ass out of the hot box?" he asked, smiling up at him crookedly. "As far as I can tell, nothing."

            Sam straightened up as Dean appeared to deflate, his face falling. She watched him take a step back, and could see the fear and denial in his eyes. "Dean," she said gently, "this is good news." He let out a cold laugh. "How?"

            "Because for once, this isn't just another round of demon crap. I mean... maybe you were saved by one of the good guys, you know?" Her voice was hopeful, almost pleading, and she could tell he could sense it. He stepped around the edge of Bobby's desk and back toward the middle of the room. Sam followed, her arms crossed over her chest. "Okay," Dean breathed after a moment. "Say it's true. Say there are angels. Then what? There's a _God?_ "

            Bobby held his hands out sideways. "At this point, Vegas money's on yeah."

            Dean shook his head. "I don't know, guys." Sam took a step nearer to him and touched his arm tentatively. He looked at her without moving his head, so she could just barely see the striking green of his eyes. "Listen, I know you're not all choirboy about this stuff," she said, "but this is becoming less and less about faith, and more and more about proof." He raised his eyebrows at her. "Proof?"

            Sam nodded once. "Yes."

            "Proof that there's a God out there that actually gives a crap about me, personally?" Sam's heart faltered slightly because of the deadpan expression on his face as he said it. He took her silence as an opportunity to continue. "I'm sorry, but I'm not buying it."

            "Why not?" she insisted. "Because why me?" he replied shortly. "If there is a God out there, why would He give a crap about _me?_ "

            "Dean - "

            "I mean, I've saved some people, okay?" he interrupted, taking a tiny stride away from her. "I figured that made up for the stealing and the leading on chicks. But why," he said, voice breaking, as he pressed his pointer finger to his chest, "do _I_ deserve to get saved? I'm just a regular guy."

            Masking the massive effect that his statement had on her, Sam gave him a small smile. "Apparently you're a regular guy that's important to the Man upstairs." He pointed at her and said, "Well, that creeps me out. I don't like getting singled out at birthday parties, much less by... _God_..." Sam shook her head. A part of her was grateful he was regaining a bit of his humor. "Well, that's too bad," she replied, patting him on the chest. "Because I think He wants you to strap on your party hat."

            "Fine," Dean grumbled. Again she smiled at him, and he sighed, relenting. He flicked his eyes toward Bobby. "What do we know about angels?" he asked. Bobby wordlessly stood up from his cushioned desk chair and gathered a stack of fat, weighty books in his arms. He dropped them unceremoniously at the very edge of his desk, in front of Dean, who stared at them as if they were infected with an incurable disease. "Start reading," said Bobby simply. Dean's face scrunched up as he glanced down at the books; then he turned halfway toward Sam.

            " _You're_ gonna get me some pie," he told her. She shook her head at him, grinning. Without another sound, Dean grabbed the book at the top of the teetering pile and plopped down on the couch. Sam shot a look at Bobby, who returned it with his own eyebrows raised. She strode over to Dean's leather jacket, which hung on the back of a chair in the kitchen, and fished the keys to the Impala out of the pocket. A part of her expected him to call after her as she left, telling her to be careful with his "Baby." But all was silent, and she left Bobby's house feeling just as lost as she had entered it.


	13. Hello? Hello? Is Anybody Out There?

Sam climbed into the driver's seat and sighed, laying her arms across the wheel and pressing her forehead into them. The morning heat poured through the windshield and heated the leather of the seats. Her hand held the key a bit tighter than it should have; she could feel it creating grooves in her skin that mirrored those on the key. Though everything around her was quiet, her head swam, drenched in a thousand thoughts and ideas about the situation at hand. Just as she moved to start up the car, she froze, staring at the ground a few feet ahead of her. They had parked the Impala in the area behind Bobby's house that was home to a couple hundred old, beaten-up automobiles. Right in the middle of the pathway, the sun was shining on a piece of one of the cars towering high above the ground, and the shadow formed a perfect cross shape. Sam's blood ran cold as she looked up into the sky through the windshield.

"God," she began uncertainly, casting her gaze around the old car lot, "if You're really up there, and You're really listening... why did You do it? Why did You send Castiel to save Dean? Don't get me wrong, I am so, _so_ thankful that You did, but... _why?_ Why did that angel say that You had work for Dean? What's going to happen to him? Just give us a clue. Help us figure this mess out. I'm trusting that You're working for good, so just... don't let him get hurt. Not again."

She sighed, trying to keep the terror out of her voice, and swallowed the tears that were choking her. Subconsciously she felt rather silly for doing this, for praying, and for still believing it worked even though nothing had changed when she did it while Dean was gone. She would never tell Dean that she prayed at least twenty times each and every day he was in Hell, that she cried and begged God to bring him back, but that she never heard anything from Him. But now, she wanted to believe that this angel, this strange Castiel, was an answer to her prayers. Somehow, he was the saving grace Sam had been asking for during those months. And although Dean was too stubborn to admit the facts, Sam understood that something like this - where none of them, nor anyone they had ever met, knew what they were dealing with - was unrequited.

She slid the key into the ignition and the car roared to life around her. With careful movements she maneuvered the Impala out of the lot and onto the road ahead, making for a small café about half a mile away from Bobby's place. As she passed by all the picturesque, white-picket-fence houses, she was reminded once more how much she wanted to be able to have something like that one day. A family. A home. She spotted a child chasing a big German shepherd around the front yard, and she smiled. It faded, though, when she remembered that the only person she could see herself having a future with did not believe he would make a good father, because his own was a horrible example.

As much as Sam was grateful for John Winchester taking her in as a baby, she was that much more resentful for his poor parenthood. Dean never could see his faults in the way she could. He believed John was a selfless father who put his kids first, always looked out for them, but Sam saw it a different way. She saw a man who became an alcoholic, obsessive wreck when his wife was murdered. A man who beat his only son when the boy would leave whatever temporary housing they were in for a few minutes, and oftentimes he only left to find extra money to buy Sam what she needed. Where Dean only perceived a revered, respectable hunter, Sam saw someone who failed to be a loving, sane example for his children.

In what seemed like no time, Sam had arrived at the small café. She drove to the end of the street and turned around so she could parallel park in front of it, and just as she reached the parking spot, her cellphone rang. She pressed the _Talk_ button, and before she could get a word out, Dean's voice said, "Sammy, I wanted to make sure you were getting chips."

Sam laughed under her breath. "You didn't tell me to get chips!"

"I'm telling you now!"

"You are extremely annoying," she groaned as she slid the car into the parking space. "Sorry," Dean chuckled. "But to be fair, takes one to know one." Sam rolled her eyes, though a smile was creeping across her face. After a moment's pause, Dean added, "So, will you get them?"

"Yes, Dean, I will get the chips."

"Barbeque for me and salt and vinegar for Bobby. And don't forget my pie!"

"Dude. When have I _ever_ forgotten the pie?" She waited for Dean's response as she stepped out of the car, juggling the car keys and her wallet in the same hand. When none came, she grinned. "Exactly." Another soft chuckle from Dean's end of the line vibrated in her ear, filling her chest with something warm.

That is, until she saw the shadowy form of Ruby leaning against a nearby building.

Sam's heart dropped into her stomach, and she said into the phone, "I gotta go." He quickly told her, "Be careful." She smiled again. "Yeah, alright. Bye." The sound of a _click_ told her that he had hung up, so she stuffed her cellphone back in her pocket. With jerky, nervous strides, she made her way over to the demon girl.

"Ruby," she greeted her curtly. "So, is it true?" the other girl replied. "Is what true?" asked Sam. Ruby rolled her eyes and pulled Sam a little closer to the wall, her voice lowering to a whisper. "Did an angel rescue Dean?"

Sam inhaled deeply. "You heard."

"Who _hasn't?_ "

The young hunter glanced around her anxiously, as if someone would be listening to them. "We're not one hundred percent sure, but I think so." Ruby's face paled noticeably, and she nodded once. "Okay. Bye, Sam." She turned on heel and began walking away. Sam reached out and grabbed her arm, forcing her to look at her.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait. What's going on?"

Ruby gave her a look half between annoyance and reluctance. She genuinely seemed frightened. "Sam, they're _angels_. I'm a demon. They're not gonna care if I'm being helpful. They smite first, and then they ask questions later."

"What do you know about them?" Sam asked her, straightening up a little at the demon's tone of voice. Ruby shook her head. "Not much," she said. "I've never met one, and I don't really want to. All I know is that they scare the holy hell out of me." Then she tilted her head down, peering up at Sam through her eyelashes. "Watch yourself, Sam."

"I'm not scared of angels."

Without another word, Ruby stalked away, leaving Sam alone. She wrapped her arms around herself as a chill jolted up her spine, though it was a relatively warm day. Ruby's back disappeared around a corner after a minute, so Sam entered the little café she had been sent to. All the while she was wandering the aisles, the short conversation kept replaying itself inside her head. _If angels can scare a demon that bad,_ she thought, _then what are they capable of that we don't know about?_


	14. Dear Old Friend!

                   "We're in Jackson," Dean said into his cellphone, which was on speaker, as he and Sam walked down the porch steps of the white country house. The home belonged to a hunter named Jed that Bobby was friends with. Dean had called him earlier that day per Bobby's request, to see if he would answer. When he did not, he sent the two to go check on the man. Upon their arrival, Sam immediately sensed something was amiss. Her feeling was only confirmed when they entered the house to see blood and shards of glass everywhere. The furniture had been ripped to shreds, and as had the body of whom they could only assume to be Jed. His chest had been torn out. A gun was lying beside him, and salt had been sprinkled all around to protect him from whatever was attacking. Sam's stomach lurched when she saw the gruesome death.

            Now, it was evening once more, and the sky around them was dark. Stars specked it like shining freckles. The half-moon was boldly white against the unbroken night. Sam thought it looked almost like a painting, and wanted to photograph it and hang it on a wall somewhere, had the situation been different. She figured that if she were to take a picture of this sky, on this particular night, she would only be reminded of the stench of drying blood, and the feel of glass crunching beneath her shoes.

            Dean continued to Bobby on the phone, "It's not pretty. He looks even worse than Olivia. What about you?" Sam heard Bobby's disheartened sigh on the other end, and what sounded like a car honking. _He must be headed back to Sioux Falls_ , she realized. "R.C.," said his voice gravely. "I checked on Carl Bates and R.C. Adams. They've redecorated... in red."

            Sam made a face, and Dean's brows furrowed. "What the hell is going on here, Bobby?" he asked rhetorically. "Why did a bunch of ghosts suddenly want to gank off-duty hunters?"

            "I don't know, but until we find out, you guys better get your asses to my place."

            Dean nodded. "We're on our way." He shut his flip-phone with a snap, and grunted as he settled into the passenger seat. "You drive," he told Sam. "I'm kind of tired." She nodded, thankful for something to occupy her time during the ride to Bobby's. She started the car up and drove back out onto the street. Sam remained silent while Dean thrashed around next to her, attempting to find a comfortable position to sleep in. Her mind was spinning through possible answers to what was happening to these hunters. After about twenty minutes, Dean glanced at the fuel gage and quipped groggily, "Damn it. Low on gas." Sam looked at him, smiling crookedly. "Another chance for you to get pie," she reminded him. He gave her a sleepy grin.

            Sam pulled into the first service station she spotted, which was about ten minutes later. Dean was fast asleep in his seat as she got out of the car and put the gas pump into the tank. She gazed at him for a moment, admiring how peaceful he looked, and then walked to a restroom nearby. When she got inside, she went up to a sink and turned the faucet on cold. She splashed the water onto her face, breathing deeply. Her breath came out misted. Straightening up, she watched as the mirror in front of her clouded over. She wiped the fog off with her hand, and her heart nearly stopped.

            Standing behind her was Officer Victor Henriksen.

            She whipped around to face him, her blood turning to ice. "Hi, Sam," the man said in a subdued sort of way. His bald, chocolate-brown head gleamed in the light panels on the ceiling. "It's been a while." Sam thought back to the last time she saw the FBI agent. It had been over a year ago, after he had been pursuing her and Dean for some time because of crimes they committed that looked much worse than they actually were. They were all trapped in a police precinct, fighting off demons as they attempted to infiltrate the building.

            "Henriksen," she gasped. "Are you - did you - ?"

            "I didn't survive. If that's what you're asking."

            Sam's heart plummeted. "I'm sorry." The man gave a weak smile. "I know you are." She took a small step nearer to him, her eyes pleading. The memory of the building exploding just moments after Sam and Dean had escaped was all too fresh in her mind. "Listen, if we'd known Lilith was coming - "

            "You wouldn't have left half a dozen innocent people in that police station to die in your place," Henriksen finished savagely. Sam retreated, but he advanced. "You did this to me," he growled. "It was your fault. She was after you, and _I_ paid the price. You left us there _to die!_ "

            Suddenly, he attacked, grabbing Sam hard. She was momentarily taken aback because of how real he felt, and wondered in a split second how he was so strong as a ghost. Then he slammed her into the stall of the toilet behind her. He took hold of the front of her jacket, yelling madly, and she noticed a small circular brand standing out pinkly on his palm. Before she could look at it any closer, he threw her against the mirrors. She attempted to scream for Dean, but Henriksen slapped her across the face, hard. The dead agent yanked a fistful of Sam's hair downward, and her head cracked against the porcelain sink with a sickeningly hollow thud. She sunk to the tiled floor, her vision blurring. The last thing she saw before she lost consciousness entirely was Dean bursting through the door with his gun in hand, shooting at Henriksen's ghost and forcing it to dissipate.


	15. I'm Sorry That I Couldn't Save You

                   When Sam awoke, her face was throbbing horribly. She leaned against the passenger door, her head resting on the cool glass. In the side mirror she caught a glimpse of her face: she had a nasty purple bruise forming on her left cheekbone, and her forehead had a cut on it, most likely from where she had been slammed into the sink. Even _thinking_ was painful. Her muscles ached. Beside her, she heard the quiet sound of a dial tone, and Dean hit the heel of his hand on the wheel angrily. "Damn it, Bobby, pick up!" He glared at his phone for a moment before shutting it and throwing it on the seat between them. Then he looked over at Sam, and his expression softened. "Hey," he breathed. "How you feeling? How many fingers am I holding up?" He did not move his hand.

            Sam smiled. "None." He gave a single light chuckle and the corner of his mouth tilted up. "I'll be fine, Dean." He focused his gaze back on the road. She could see him chewing on the inside of his cheek nervously. "So, Henriksen?" he said after a moment. Sam groaned as she attempted to sit up. Her head felt impossibly heavy. "Yep."

            "Why? What did he want?"

            "Revenge," replied Sam. "Because we got him killed."

            "Sam - "

            "Well, we _did_ , Dean."

            He shook his head. "Alright, stop right there," he said, concern coloring his tone darkly. Sam tried to take a deep breath, but every movement felt like she was being hit by a car. For a ghost, the agent certainly did some damage. "Whatever the hell is going on, it's happening to us now, okay?" Dean told her. "I can't get ahold of Bobby, so if you're not thinking answers, don't think at all."

            She rolled her eyes, but she knew he was right. The fact that he could not get Bobby to answer the phone was a big red flag in the middle of all this chaos. Her eyes flitted back out the darkened window, and on a passing sign, she read, _Sioux Falls - 60 miles_. She sighed inwardly. A prayer was repeating in her head, begging for Bobby to be alright. He was tough, she knew, and much tougher than anyone she'd ever met, but he was only human. And humanity was a weakness that was, Sam was just beginning to grasp, deadly.

            When they arrived at Bobby's, it was nine-thirty in the morning. Dean had barely parked the car before Sam leapt out, pulling her silver handgun out of the glove compartment and sprinting up to his front door. Dean followed closely and opened it, sweeping his gaze over the inside before going in. As if they shared a mind, the two cocked their guns simultaneously. "Bobby?" whispered Dean harshly.

            He almost tripped over something thin and rusty-looking on the floor, and Sam put a hand on his arm to stop him. He knelt down and picked up the object, which was an iron fireplace poker. Immediately Sam realized that Bobby was probably facing the same entity that she and Dean had encountered. He gestured to the stairs and said quietly, "I'll go. You check outside." Sam nodded and left the house once more, circling around its exterior to the junkyard out back. She casually strolled between the towers of beat-up cars. "Bobby!" she called out. "Bobby?"

            Inside the house, Dean had climbed the stairs and was walking around the upper floor, searching for any sign of the old mechanic. "Bobby?" he breathed. Somewhere behind him, a door opened creakily. He turned, but no one could be seen. Gripping the gun a little tighter, he said, "Come out, come out, whoever you are."

            Just then, a young woman with shoulder-length, stringy brown hair appeared in front of him. She seemed to phase into existence, flickering slightly. _A ghost_ , his mind provided. Her face was dirty and worn, her clothes ragged. There were dark rings under her green eyes. "Dean Winchester," she greeted him, and at once he realized why she looked so maddeningly familiar. "Still so bossy." She tilted her head to the side curiously. "What, don't you recognize me? This is what I looked like before that demon hacked off my hair and dressed me like a slut."

            "Meg," he wheezed. When he had known her, she was vivacious and vicious. Her hair had been in a short pixie cut, and her face had always been painted with full makeup. The clothes she used to wear were tight and usually leather. The girl that stood before Dean now was homely, plain-looking. She waved a bit. "Hi." Dean suddenly wished that he had Ruby's knife on hand. As if she could hear his thoughts, Meg chuckled. "It's okay. I'm not a demon."

            Dean lowered his gun. "You're the girl the demon possessed." She nodded. "Meg Masters. Nice to finally meet you when I'm not, y'know, choking on my own blood." The memory of when he and Sam had exorcised Meg flashed through his mind; the young girl had been so broken and was standing on the very edge of death when they were finished. She died in Dean's arms, whispering thank yous.

            Presently, Meg held up her hands in a sort of surrender, mistaking the pained look on his face as skepticism. "It's okay. Seriously. I'm just a college girl. Sorry," she laughed coldly. " _Was_. I was walking home one night and I got jumped by all this smoke. Next thing you know, I'm a prisoner" - She tapped a finger on her temple - "in here. Now, I was awake. I had to watch while she _murdered_ people."

            Dean shuddered unperceptively. "I'm sorry."

            "Oh, yeah?" Meg asked, her voice steely and frigid. "So sorry that you had me thrown off a building?" Something in her eyes flashed dangerously, and Dean felt the urge to take a step back. "Well, we thought-"

            "No, you _didn't_ think!" shouted Meg. This time Dean did step backward. Her face was contorted with blistering rage. "I kept waiting, praying! I was trapped in there _screaming_ at you! 'Just help me, please!' You're supposed to help people, Dean. Why didn't you help me?"

            "I'm sorry," he repeated, his insides writhing uncomfortably with guilt. "Stop saying you're sorry!" she yelled. With movements faster than lightning, she flew forward and slapped him in the face, knocking him to the floor with a _thump_. "Meg," he begged as she kicked him in the ribs. "Meg - " She drew her foot back and slammed it into his stomach, consequently forcing all the air from his lungs. After a moment, he sucked in a deep breath, tears stinging his eyes painfully. "We didn't know," he gasped.

            Meg shook her head, lips pursed. "No. You just attacked. Did you ever think that there was still an innocent girl in here? _No_. You just charged in, slashing and burning. You think you're some kind of hero?"

            "No, I don't."

            She crouched next to him and grabbed hold of his jacket, yanking him up so that their faces were mere inches apart. Dean noticed a thin, oddly-shaped pink brand on her palm as she did so. "You're damn right," she spat. "Do you have any idea what it's like to be ridden for months by pure evil, while your family has no idea what happened to you?"

            Dean did know. That was one thing he knew quite well: the feeling of helplessness, of self-pity, of shame because he was not strong enough to fight back. He knew what it was like to be trapped somewhere and have no way of escaping, no way of informing the ones he loved most that he needed help. He needed _them_. Every single moment while he was in Hell, he ached for someone to know that he was screaming out for them. Truth be told, when he had been fighting the demon possessing Meg, he had already assumed that the girl was dead. He never once thought that she was alive, still holding on to dear life, trying to take the reins back from the monster inside her. His bones were quivering inside his body as he stared up at the ghost of Meg, the fury making her eyes gleam terrifyingly. He was not afraid, but the guilt that weighted him down was so overpowering that he could do nothing but sit there like a stone. She still had a hold on him, and she was waiting for some kind of response, though Dean knew it would not ease the pain she felt. "We did the best we could," he said remorsefully. With an angry shake of her head she shoved him away and kicked him once more.


	16. These Are The Things - The Things We Lost

Out in the junkyard behind the house, Sam was still searching for Bobby, now a bit more frantically. She peered between the hunks of metal and underneath cars, but saw him nowhere. She called out his name once as she approached a particularly tall stack of broken-down automobiles, and she stopped. A chill passed over her skin; her breath rose in a mist in front of her face. She looked around her at the seemingly empty cars. "We're here, Bobby," she said. _I'm close. I'm so close. Where are you, Bobby?_

Meg stood over Dean glaringly. Her hands were on her hips as she straightened herself up, and he wondered if he should try to scoot away to avoid another blow. "It wasn't just me, Dean," she told him, the statement unexpected. "I had a sister. A little sister. She _worshipped_ me. You know how little siblings are, right?"

Dean tensed up, remembering Sam outside with a jolt in his heart. Meg seemed to notice. "How they'll do anything for you?" she continued. There was something in her voice. It was not quite animosity, nor was it sincerity. Dean thought it sounded as if she knew a secret that he didn't, and she enjoyed the prospect of hanging it over him. He shifted on the carpet that was spread out on the wooden floorboards underneath him. "She was never the same after I disappeared," said Meg. Again Dean's mind flitted to Sam. "She just... she just got lost. And when my body was lying in the morgue, beat up and broken..."

"Meg..." he whispered.

"Do you know what that did to her?" she demanded. Tears shone in her eyes like hot acid. "She killed herself, Dean!" She reared back and kicked him in the ribs again, this time more forcefully than the others. "Because of _you_! Because all you were thinking about was _your_ family, _your_ revenge, and _your_ demon! Fifty words of Latin a little sooner, and I'd still be alive. My _baby sister_ would still be alive." Her voice broke, and then she shouted, "That blood is on your hands, Dean!"

He swallowed hard. "You're right."


	17. In Too Deep

                   Sam suddenly spotted a side mirror of the topmost car in the stack she was nearest to. In its reflection was Bobby's green and white cap. She jumped into action, springing onto a car and climbing toward him. "Bobby!" she screamed. "Hold on, Bobby, I'm coming!" She grabbed a crowbar that was lying in the seat of the car she was on top of and hopped on the next one up. Through the cracked windshield she could see Bobby thrashing around, with two pale, gray-toned little girls sitting next to him. One of them was holding his head still, and the other had a hand over his mouth and her fingers clamping his nose shut.

            Wielding the crowbar, Sam pried the doors to the car open. At once, the two ghost girls put their hands on her shoulders and shoved her backwards. She tumbled off the side of the car and landed on one below. White-hot pain bloomed on the back of her head, and she felt the cut on her forehead reopen. Bright lights popped in front of her eyes. Blood trickled down the side of her face as one of the girls leaped on top of her. Sam whacked her with the crowbar, and she disappeared into thin air. Up in the car, Bobby had somehow pulled a piece of metal off of the car and swung it at the other girl. Within a moment, she was gone too, and Sam and Bobby sat back, breathing heavily.


	18. Where We Gonna Go From Here?

                   Dean whipped the gun back out of his inner jacket pocket and aimed it at Meg. Something had just crashed outside, and he needed to get out there and make sure Sam was okay. Meg laughed icily, "Come on, Dean. Did your brain get French-fried in Hell? You can't shoot me with bullets."

            "I'm not shooting you," he told her simply. In one swift movement, he cocked the gun and repositioned it so that it was pointing at the ceiling, where a chandelier hung directly over the ghost. He pulled the trigger. The bullet soared into the air and sliced through the metal connecting it to the ceiling. With a deafening clang, the chandelier fell on top of her, its outer ring surrounding her perfectly. She dissipated in a flurry of smoke.

            "Iron," Dean breathed proudly. He got up, clutching his stomach, and hobbled back down the stairs as quickly as he could. The front door opened just as he reached the bottom step. Sam and Bobby appeared in its threshold, Sam pressing a rag to her forehead. The rag was soaked through with blood and her eyes were slightly unfocused. Dean's heart skipped a beat.

            He walked over to them and clapped Bobby on the shoulder, who gave him a weak smile. "What happened?" he inquired of Sam, nodding at her wound. She shrugged. "Minor abrasion," she replied. She winked at him and moved into the study. The steady _thump_ of Dean's heart was interrupted once more, but this time for an entirely different reason, and he smiled at the ground. Bobby chuckled lightly after her, then followed. When Dean entered the room, he saw Sam sitting on the couch, her head in her hands. She was breathing deeply and measuredly. He sat down next to her and put an arm around her shoulders. Bobby leaned against his desk with a heavy sigh as Sam relaxed into Dean's side.

            "Who'd you see?" Bobby asked him quietly. Dean looked away from the back of Sam's head and stared at him. "The girl who had been possessed by one of the worst demons us and Dad ever went up against," he replied. Sam sat up, peering at his face closely. She was, for a brief second, acutely aware of how close they were, but she shrugged it off. " _Meg?_ " she asked, incredulous. His eyes zigzagged away from hers as he nodded. "And she was pissed," he added. Then he looked at Bobby again. "What about you?"

            Bobby squared his shoulders uncomfortably. "Couple of kids that I lost during a hunt," he said vaguely. "It was a long time ago. Back before Sam could walk on her own." He exhaled, looking at the floor. Dean glanced at Sam out of the corner of his eye. "So, they're all people we know?" she said, her eyebrows furrowed in thought.

            "Not just know," he answered. "People we couldn't save." A silence settled over them, thick with something Sam could not identify. She moved out from under Dean's comforting arm, though she wished she didn't immediately after she did so. Without looking at her, he got up and paced the width of the room a few times. "Hey," he said after a moment, "I saw something on Meg. Did she have a tattoo when she was alive?"

            Sam shook her head, thinking. "I don't think so."

            "It was like a-a mark on her hand," he went on, holding out his palm to demonstrate. "Almost like a brand." Sam stood at this statement and pointed at Dean. "I saw a mark, too. On Henriksen." Dean's eyes widened a little. Bobby glanced between them and asked, "What did it look like?"

            "Um... paper?" Sam looked around her in search of a scrap piece. Bobby turned around, grabbed a notebook and pencil off his desk, and handed it to her. "Thanks," she muttered. Her shaking hand drew a pair of perpendicular lines in the middle of the paper. Then she added curved lines and a circle to the tips of each, so that the original line intersected the circle. She connected each of the tips with parabola-like curves. Finally, she encased all of this within a rough oval shape. She held it out in front of her for Dean to see.

            "That's it," he said surely. Bobby moved to look at it, scratching his chin. Taking the notebook from Sam, he told them, "I may have seen this before. We gotta move." He stuffed the drawing under his arm and walked quickly over to his desk. "Whoa," Sam started, holding out a hand to get his attention. He began gathering books into his arms. "Follow me," he ordered with a nod.

            "Okay, but where are we going?" asked Sam. He gave her a look she knew well. "Someplace safe, ya idjit." He strode out of the room, making for the kitchen. Sam glared at Dean as he chuckled under his breath, shaking his head at the older man. They trailed behind him as he yanked a creaky wooden door at the far right corner of his kitchen nearly off its hinges. The sound made it seem like it had not been opened in years. Behind the door was a short set of unsafe-looking stairs leading down to a big metal door. It had no knob, only a submarine-style wheel. When Bobby reached it, he twisted the thing, and it squeaked loudly. He pulled it toward himself; it swung out to reveal a capacious circular room full of tools, bookshelves, worktables and weapons. There was a cot pushed up against the curve of the far wall. On nearly every open space of the walls, a pentagram or some other type of warding symbol was painted meticulously. Sam looked high above her head, at the only source of light in the room. There was a fan slowly spinning on the ceiling, allowing some daylight in, and its metal bars constructed a massive devil's trap. Directly beneath it, on the floor in front of her, the same trap was scrawled in white spray paint. Everything around them was covered in a fine layer of dust.

            Sam let out a thin stream of air as she touched a nearby wall. It had a familiar feel and smell to it, something she was acclimated to using. She breathed, "Bobby, is this..."

            "Solid iron," he replied. A hint of pride underlined his tone. "Completely coated in salt. One-hundred-percent ghost-proof." Sam looked at him, half smiling. "You built a panic room?" she asked.

            He shrugged defensively. "I had a weekend off."

            "Bobby," said Dean, wandering around the room and examining things in turn. "What?" the older man grumbled. "You're _awesome_ ," he quipped, pointing a finger at him. Bobby chuckled. Dean cast his gaze around the room one more time, and this time his eyes fell on a poster that hung above a table. It portrayed a thin, largely-breasted woman in a bikini. "Oh," Dean said awkwardly. Sam stared at her feet, fighting the urge to either laugh or blush.


	19. I Remember You Like Yesterday

                   They set up their respective work areas, Bobby at one table poring over books, and Sam and Dean standing at another. The two Winchesters took empty iron shell casings and filled them with rock salt as defense against whatever they were fighting. Sam still wasn't entirely certain, but she did know that it was different than anything else they'd faced. Every so often she would glance at Dean on her right, his face concentrated and yet serene, somehow at the same time, and she would wonder what he was thinking about. She did this a lot, lately. Wonder what he was thinking, and if it was about Hell, and if he was hurting and would not tell her. She supposed it was just the nosy little sister side of her, but then again, it always deeply offended her when Dean would shut himself away, for some reason. She prayed that that was not what he was doing now.

            After about thirty or so minutes of silence, Dean put down the bullet he was making and said randomly, "See, this is why I can't get behind God." Sam furrowed her eyebrows and looked at him. "What are you talking about?" she asked.

            Dean sighed. "If He doesn't exist, fine. Bad crap happens to good people. That's how it is. There's no rhyme or reason, just random, horrible evil. I get it, okay. I can roll with that. _But_ ," he continued, turning his body toward Sam, "if He is out there, what is _wrong_ with Him? Where the hell is He while all these decent people are getting torn to shreds? How does He live with Himself? Why doesn't He _help?_ "

            At a loss, Sam looked over at Bobby. Her mouth hung open but no words came out. Bobby held up his hands. "I ain't touchin' this one with a ten-foot pole," he said. Dean scoffed, "Yeah." He met Sam's gaze and held it for a few moments. There was something in his eyes that he was trying to convey to her, a message she just was not receiving, but she kept searching in his irises' steely, one-of-a-kind greenness.

            "Found it," Bobby said, breaking them both from their conjoined stupor. Sam started a bit. "What?" She and Dean went to his side as he pointed down at the page of a book. "The symbol you saw," he mused, "the brand on the ghosts..."

            "Yeah?" prompted Dean.

            Bobby heaved a breath. "Mark of the Witnesses." Sam scrunched up her nose in confusion. "Witnesses?" she asked. "Witnesses to what?" Bobby shifted in his chair, turning to look at them while keeping his hand on the page. "The unnatural," he explained gravely. "None of them died what you'd call ordinary deaths. See, these ghosts - they were forced to rise. They woke up in agony. They were like rabid dogs, but it ain't their fault. Someone rose them. On purpose."

            "Who?" Sam inquired. "Do I look like I know?" Bobby shot back, a bit more harshly than he meant. When he spoke again, his voice was softer. "But whoever it was used a spell so powerful it left a mark, a brand on their souls. Whoever did this had big plans. It's called the 'Rising of the Witnesses.' It figures into an ancient prophesy."

            "Wait," said Dean, holding up a hand. He was staring at the book Bobby's hand was laying on so protectively. "What, um... what book is that prophesy from?" Again Bobby sighed, and Sam got the feeling that he was not too keen on telling him the answer. "Well, the widely distributed version's just for tourists, y'know," he said. Sam saw the slight trembling in his hands as he gestured toward the book on the table. There was something oddly familiar about the gold-sided pages, and how they blended so perfectly when the book was shut. "But, long story short - Revelation."

            Dean's apprehensive curiosity evaporated, and was replaced with a fleeting look of total shock. Then his stoicism returned, his face hardened, and Sam's heart sank both with Bobby's words and Dean's change in demeanor. She stared at the older man, imploring him with her eyes. "This is a sign, kids," he told them.

            "A sign of what?" the Winchesters said in unison, their voices tinged with matching suppressed fear. Bobby dropped their scorching gazes, intently surveying the dirty iron floor under his feet. Sam wracked her memory to recall when she had read through the Bible, and she searched for any lingering passages from that book. All she could remember was that it was the last book in the Holy Word. And something else tickled her brain. _What was this book written about? It detailed something important..._ Suddenly, the thought came to her. The book of Revelation spoke about -

            "The apocalypse," rasped Bobby. Sam's stomach dropped to her feet, and Dean shifted uncomfortably beside her. His eyes had sharpened into daggers. Sam worried that he would either punch the wall, start shouting, or faint. She watched him carefully out of her peripheral vision, seeing his fists clench and unclench as they laid on his arms, which were folded over his chest. "Apocalypse?" he repeated, disbelieving. "Like, the _apocalypse_ apocalypse? The four horsemen, pestilence, five-dollars-a-gallon gas apocalypse?"

            Bobby nodded. "That's the one." Dean shook his head at his toes, and Bobby looked back at the book. "The Rise of the Witnesses is sort of a-a mile marker." Sam moved from one foot to the other. "Okay," she said, "so what do we do now?"

            "Road trip," Dean quipped, clapping his hands together. "Grand Canyon, Star Trek Experience. Bunny Ranch." He winked at Sam, but she saw the terror in his eyes. She was unused to seeing such untamed, unbridled fright in someone as outwardly unshakeable as Dean was.

            "First things first," Bobby said, giving Dean a look, "how 'bout we survive our friends out there?"

            Dean nodded. "Great. Any ideas aside from staying in this room till Judgement Day?" Bobby gestured at the table in front of him again, but this time he tilted the back cover of the Bible upward, revealing a smaller book underneath it. "It's a spell," he told them, "to send the Witnesses back to rest. Should work."

            " _Should_ ," echoed Dean, making air quotes around the word. "Awesome."

            Ignoring him completely, Bobby said to Sam, "If I translated it correctly, I think I've got everything we need here at the house." Sam simply nodded, but once more it was Dean who spoke. "Any chance you've got everything we need here in this room?" he inquired hopefully. Again, Bobby gave him a look. "What, you think our luck is gonna start now, all of a sudden?" He scoffed. "Spell's gotta be cast over an open fire."

            "The fireplace in the library," Sam suggested. Bobby pointed his finger at her. "Bingo." Dean made a face, looking around him at the weaponry. "That's just not as appealing as a, uh, ghost-proofed panic room, y'know?"

            Sam and Bobby exchanged a look, the corner of Sam's mouth quirked upward slightly. She began stuffing the iron bullets into two shotguns, one for her and one for Dean. Bobby tore the spell out of the smaller book and tucked it into his pocket. Dean dumped the rest of the bullets into his jacket, but left a small pile for Sam in case she needed to reload. She quickly placed them in her own pockets. The three of them walked over to the sealed iron door, and Bobby looked back. "Cover each other," he reminded them. "And aim careful. Don't run out of ammo until I'm done, or it'll shred you. Ready?"

            The two young hunters nodded, and Bobby spun the wheel on the door. It opened with a loud creak. Sam raised her shotgun out of habit. The hallway in front of them was dark, but she saw something and put a hand on Dean's arm. He followed her gaze. The ghost of a large, round man was sitting on the stairs, blocking their path. He had dark curly hair, and Sam recognized him faster than she expected she would. _Ronald_. She remembered him from their fiasco at the bank with the Shifter about a year and a half earlier. He had been a few years younger than Sam at the time, and was shot right through the heart.

            "Hey, Dean," said the young man. "You remember me?" Dean raised his head a little. "Ronald, huh? With the laser eyes?" he clarified. "Man, I wish I could say it's good to see you." The ghost stood up in a flash, pointing accusingly at him. "I am dead because of you!" he shouted. "You were supposed to help me!"

            Bobby shot his gun once, and the bullet caused Ronald to disintegrate. He looked at Dean sideways. "If you're gonna shoot, shoot. Don't talk." He walked ahead of them and climbed the stairs. Sam met Dean's eye for a fraction of a second before following Bobby.


	20. The Silence

                   The door that lead into the cellar closed as Dean, who was trailing behind Sam, came through it. Bobby was already in the study and setting up the book to read off the spell. Sam grabbed a bottle of salt from the kitchen cabinet; without a word, she began creating a circle around the study. Dean lit the fire in the hearth.

            "Upstairs, linen closet," Bobby said to Sam when she had finished spreading the salt. "Red hex box. It'll be heavy." She nodded. "Got it." Turning on heel she sprinted from the room and up the steps. Dean shook his hands, attempting to draw feeling back into them, as the two ghost girls appeared in the living room again. They were clothed in the same white-and-black dresses with bows on the front. The hair on both their heads was curled, but appeared wet for some reason. They had disturbingly dark circles around their eyes. "Bobby?" one of them called to him. Dean shot his gun at them, and they disappeared.

            Immediately Bobby looked at him. "Kitchen, cutlery drawer," he ordered. "It's got a false bottom. Hemlock, opium, and wormwood."

            Dean paused. " _Opium?_ "

            " _Just go!_ " Bobby swept his hands across the desk, knocking everything on top of it to the floor. Dean ran into the kitchen. The girls appeared again just as he left the room, and Bobby hesitated for a moment, his hand hovering over the half-drawn symbol he had been scrawling in chalk. "You walked right by us while that monster ate us all up, Bobby," one of the girls said. "You could've saved us, Bobby," the other added.

            He picked up his gun and shot at each of them.

            Upstairs, Sam ripped open the closet door, the gun tucked under her arm. She moved blankets around until her fingers touched something solid and cold. Grabbing onto it with both hands she yanked a giant, weighty red box from behind the linens. "You know what really pisses me off, Sam?" a voice said behind her. She whipped around and saw the form of Meg, standing human and normal-looking. Sam took hold of her gun and shot a bullet at the ghost, but it missed.

            "You saw how I suffered for months," she told Sam coldly. "I thought you must have learned something. I thought I must have _died_ for something."

            "Meg," pleaded Sam.

            The woman continued as if she had not spoken. "But what you're doing with that demon, Ruby?" Sam's blood ran cold at the mention of that name. Her mind reeled at how the ghost could have possibly known about the demon, and if she truly was aware of what Sam had been doing. "How many innocent bodies has Ruby burned through for kicks? How many girls just like me? And you don't send her back to Hell? _You're a monster!_ "

            Without so much as a thought, Sam raised the shotgun and shot Meg. Her form evaporated, leaving a wisp of smoke in its wake.

            Dean rifled through every drawer in the kitchen looking for the one with a false bottom. When he reached the last drawer in the counter, he yanked it out of the wood and set it on top of the table. Shoving cutlery aside, he knocked on the inside bottom, and smiled as the hollow sound filled his ears. There was a small ring that he could use to lift the bottom, and when he did, he grabbed every item that was lying inside and shoved them all in his jacket pockets. He put the drawer back in the counter, and jumped as he heard the doors to the kitchen slam shut behind him. "Dean!" Bobby shouted worriedly. "I'm alright, Bobby, just keep working!" he called back, staring at the now-closed wooden sliding doors. In his line of vision, the shape of a dark-skinned human flickered into existence.

            "Victor," he said softly. The dead agent smiled. "Dean," he greeted in reply. "I know," said Dean at once. Henriksen shook his head. "No. You don't."

            "It's my fault you're dead. I left you behind. And the minute Sam and I heard about that explosion on the news, I thought, 'I should have known.' I should have protected you. I'm sorry." As he spoke, Dean was slowly reaching for his gun behind him on the countertop. Just as his fingertips touched the barrel, it went flying across the room and hit the opposite wall with a loud _smack_. "Unh-unh," said Henriksen, stepping toward Dean. "Not so fast. You think you left and Lilith came and we all died in a beautiful blast of" - He spread his fingers out and swept both his hands through the air in front of his face - " _white light?_ If only. Forty-five minutes."

            Dean froze. "What?"

            "Over forty-five minutes," Henriksen repeated. "Lilith said she wanted to have some fun. The secretary was first. Remember her? Nancy, the virgin? Lilith filleted Nancy's skin off piece by piece. Right in front of us. Made us watch. Nancy never stopped screaming."

            " _No_ ," breathed Dean, stumbling back against the counter.

            "I was the last."

            "Victor..." Henriksen jerked forward, his arm outstretched, and plunged his hand into Dean's chest. Dean felt the ghost's fingers wrap around his heart, squeezing it agonizingly. He gasped as his blood ceased to flow, and his lungs began to spasm. "Tell me how it's fair," said Victor Henriksen angrily, his face inches from Dean's. "You get saved from Hell, I die. Why do _you_ deserve another chance, Dean?"

            Right as Dean's vision started to black out, Sam burst into the room, her gun raised. A bullet sliced through Henriksen's form and he turned into smoke. Dean collapsed against the cabinets behind him, gasping for air. Sam rushed to his side and put a hand on his cheek. "You alright?" she asked breathlessly. He gulped once. "No."

            Her eyes raked over his features, drinking in his paleness, and she sighed shallowly. "Let's go." She helped Dean to his feet and they jogged back to the library, where Bobby was finishing up drawing something on the desk in chalk. They dumped the ingredients next to a bowl that was sitting in the middle of the symbol he'd just drawn.

            The ghost of Ronald reappeared at the end of the room while Dean was reloading his gun. He noticed him as the gun clicked shut again, and he cocked it, saying in a friendly way, "Ronald, hey. Come on, man, I thought we were pals."

            "That's when I was breathing," the apparition spat. "Now I'm gonna eat you alive." Dean made a face; he looked uncomfortable. "Well... c'mon, I'm not a cheeseburger."

            Sam shot him a look as he raised his gun and pointed it at Ronald, but by the time he had aimed, the ghost had disappeared once more. Dean glanced at Sam uncertainly, and Bobby began to recite the spell in Latin. After the first few words were spoken, the windows on the left wall exploded, and a strong wind blew around the room. It shifted the salt, breaking the circle, so that they were no longer protected. Sam reached for the bottle of salt again, but Meg appeared at her side, and she shot at her as first instinct. Bobby continued the spell, watching as the ghosts flashed in and out of the room. Dean and Sam shot at each and every one of them, but they just kept getting closer. Sam knew she was running low on bullets. Dean paused for a second to reload; Agent Henriksen slapped the rifle out of his hands. Sam focused her shooting on Ronald and Meg as they advanced farther into the room, and Dean grabbed another gun only to find it empty. As a last resort, he picked up the iron poker and swiped it through Henriksen's head. Sam fired another shot at Ronald, so she did not see Meg materialize behind her. Meg waved her hand once, and Sam was pushed back into the wall at the end of the room, far away from Bobby and Dean. A desk dislodged itself from the floor and slid rapidly over to Sam's kicking legs. It crushed her against the wall. She let out a shriek of pain.

            " _Sam!_ " Dean shouted, noticing her trying to shove the desk away. He started to go over to her, but she screamed, "Cover Bobby!" Dean nodded and whipped around to see Bobby speaking into the wooden bowl rapidly as he turned toward the fireplace. The two ghost girls that haunted him sat on the desk behind him, waiting patiently. Meg reached forward and jammed her hand into Bobby's back; he bellowed, "Dean!"

            Dean dived forward and caught the bowl just before it crashed to the floor. "Fireplace!" yelled Bobby. The younger man jumped toward the hearth and threw the bowl into the flames, which turned blue upon impact. He looked back in time to see all the Witnesses evaporate. Bobby fell to the ground, breathing heavily, and Sam grunted as she pushed the desk off her legs. "Bobby?" said Dean, worried, as he kneeled beside the man. Sam jogged over to them, and she and Dean helped Bobby to his feet. He nodded, indicating he was alright, and gave a weak smile.

            The world around them seemed unnaturally quiet.


	21. An Angel On My Shoulder But A Devil In My Head

                   The Winchesters planned to leave that evening, but Bobby forced them to stay the night at his place. "After all, with you two knuckleheads, I never know if you're ever gettin' any sleep!" The older man went up to his room around eleven, having suffered through a run for greasy takeout food from Sam and a few hours of mindless television. After much debate, Dean finally convinced Sam to take the couch, and he made himself a pallet on the floor, telling her he preferred it anyway. The last thing he saw before he drifted off to sleep was Sam's tiny, grateful smile, and the last thing he felt was her lips on his cheek as she gently kissed him goodnight.

            Dean awoke later that night to the faint sound of rustling wings. He blinked in the darkness, staring through the open sliding doors into the kitchen, and saw a figure standing in front of the sink. He jumped to his feet, all grogginess fleeing from his body with the surge of panic, and walked toward the person. As he got closer, and the moonlight made the stranger's face visible, Dean realized he was looking at the angel, Castiel, in all his business-suit-and-trenchcoat glory. He glanced back at Sam, checking to make sure she was still asleep, and then walked over to join the angel in the kitchen.

            "Excellent job with the Witnesses," said Castiel, his deep voice still coming as a surprise to Dean. It rattled around in Dean's chest, reverberating in the room in an oddly satisfying way. He crossed his arms over his chest angrily. "You were hip to all this?" he demanded. Castiel opened and closed his mouth a few times before replying, "I was, um, made aware, if that's what you mean."

            "Yeah. Well, thanks a lot for the 'angelic assistance.' You know, I almost got my _heart_ ripped out of my chest."

            "But you didn't."

            Dean rolled his eyes, his patience running thin. "I thought angels were supposed to be guardians," he told him. "Fluffy wings, halos - you know, Michael Landon. Not _dicks_." Castiel's eyebrows furrowed together. "Read the Bible," he answered snippily. "Angels are warriors of God. I am a _soldier_."

            "Oh yeah? Then why didn't you fight?"

            "I'm not here to perch on your shoulder," said Castiel, taking a step closer to Dean. "We had larger concerns." Dean scoffed, " _Concerns?_ There were people getting torn to shreds down here! And, by the way, while all this is going on, where the hell is your boss, huh? If there is a God?"

            Castiel's eyes were filled with something along the lines of hurt. "There's a God."

            "I'm not convinced," said Dean, earning another personally affronted gaze from the angel. "Because if there's a God, what the hell is He waiting for, huh? Genocide? Monsters roaming the earth? The freakin' apocalypse? At what point does He lift a damn finger and help the poor bastards that are stuck down here?"

            "The Lord works - "

            "If you say 'mysterious ways,' so help me, I will kick your ass," Dean growled. Castiel simply cocked his head to the side and gave Dean his trademark look. Dean chose to ignore the angel's curiosity at his hostility. "So, Bobby was right, then. About the Witnesses. This is some kind of a... sign of the apocalypse."

            Castiel nodded. "That's why we're here," he explained. "Big things afoot." Dean shifted his weight from leg to leg idly. "Do I want to know what kind of things?" he asked. Castiel's eyebrows rose up on his forehead, and he flicked his eyes away from Dean's for a moment. That was something that unnerved Dean: the angel kept eye contact throughout the entire conversation. It was as if he refused to not look at him directly when he spoke to him, which was new to Dean. "I sincerely doubt it," responded Castiel, "but you need to know. The Rising of the Witnesses is one of the Sixty-Six Seals."

            "Okay, so I'm guessing that's not a show at SeaWorld."

            "Those Seals are being broken by Lilith."

            The name brought a jetstream of molten hot anger flooding into Dean's blood. His head pounded slightly at the remembrance of what Henriksen had said to him. _Lilith wanted to have some fun. I was the last._ Dean felt overcome with the urge to set out immediately and hunt the demon down, to destroy her in the most painful way possible, but he just grit his teeth and replied, "She did the spell. She rose the Witnesses."

            "Mm-hmm," said Castiel. "And not just here. Twenty other hunters are dead." Dean's fingernails dug into the skin on his arm, and he knew that he would have marks there. "Of course," he hissed. "She picked victims that the hunters couldn't save so that they would barrel right after us."

            "Lilith has a certain sense of humor."

            Dean gave a cold chuckle. "Well, we put those spirits back to rest." Castiel shook his head. "Doesn't matter," he said. "The Seal was broken." Dean peered at him, confused. "Why break the Seal, anyway?" he inquired. The angel glanced up at the ceiling, thinking, and then answered, "You think of the Seals as locks on a door."

            The hunter nodded a few times. "Okay. Last one opens, and...?"

            "Lucifer walks free."

            The Earth around Dean seemed to be turning in slow-motion. It was as if all the sharp corners had been simultaneously dulled, and the colors dimmed. The brightest things in the room were Castiel's inquisitive baby blue eyes, and even those felt as if they were searing Dean's corneas. "Lucifer?" he repeated weakly. "But - but I thought Lucifer was just a story they told at demon Sunday school. There's no such thing."

            Castiel stepped closer yet to Dean, putting a hand on his own chest. "Three days ago, you thought there was no such thing as me," he told him. Dean swallowed. "Why do you think we're here, walking among you now, for the first time in two thousand years?"

            Dean thought. "To stop Lucifer."

            "That's why we've arrived," said Castiel with a slight nod. Dean ran a hand across his short hair and sucked in a deep breath. The angel watched his movements with interest. "Well," quipped Dean after a minute, his tone cold, "bang-up job so far. Stellar work with the Witnesses. Nice."

            "We tried. And there are other battles, other Seals. Some we'll win, some we'll lose. This one, we lost. Our numbers are not unlimited, you know. _Six_ of my brothers died in the field this week." Castiel somehow managed to move even closer to Dean, and there was hardly any space for him to breathe. He stared into the shocking blue eyes of the angel as they hardened, the corners of his lips curving into a frown. It was like watching a calm tropical ocean freeze into solid ice. "You think the armies of Heaven should just follow you around?" Castiel demanded, his gravelly voice the equivalent of a lit fuse on a stick of dynamite. "There's a bigger picture here, Dean."

            He leaned his face toward the hunter, and his tone dropped dangerously low. "You should show me some respect," he told him. "I dragged you out of Hell. I can throw you back in."

            With the soft sound of flapping wings, Castiel vanished, leaving Dean alone and shaking in the kitchen. He went back into the study and sat on his palette, rubbing his hands on his arms to try to take the numbness out of them. His mind was running circles around what the angel said: about Lilith, about the Seals, about the impending apocalypse, about _him_. Castiel had spoken so fervently, so personally, about pulling Dean from the pit, that half of him wondered if God had really commanded him to be freed. And if He hadn't, then what was the point? Why would Castiel rescue him in the first place? Dean could not think of one good reason why God, or the angels, for that matter, would need him for anything. He believed he was better off in Hell, where he couldn't hurt anyone.

            As soon as that thought crossed his brain, however, he closed his eyes as a stab of pain poked at his heart. He remembered the seven beer bottles that had littered the floor of Sam's motel room when he first found her. He remembered the deep rings around her eyes, the twinkle in her eye that had very nearly died out, the way she clung to him like he was the only thing that kept her from floating away. Maybe he was, and in a way, she did the same for him. Kept him grounded. Even when he wanted to rip her head off, she was the one thing that he could always count on, and he knew that. He gazed up at her, sleeping soundly on the couch with her promise ring glinting brightly in the moonlight, as he lay down on his pillow, and he hoped that she felt the same way. He understood, deep down, that even if there was no "work" God had for him, that he _was_ needed. Sam needed him.

            And Dean needed Sam.


	22. The Bible In The Drawer... What Did It Ever Do For Me?

                   He woke up again a few hours later. Blurred colors were moving around in his vision, and light shone painfully into his eyes. He heard a _thump_ and rubbed them, staring at where the sound had come from. Sam was up and already packing their things so they could set out again. When she saw him looking, she paused. "You alright?" she asked, crouching next to him. He didn't respond, only shook his head. "What's wrong, Dean?" Sam pressed. She sat beside him and put her hand under his chin, gently forcing him to look her in the eye. Castiel's words bounced around the inside of Dean's head, and he squinted up at her.

            "So... you've got no problem in believing i-in God and angels?" he said shakily. Sam shook her head. "No, not really," she replied. Her eyes were glued to his face, concern making her look older than she was. Dean swallowed. "So I guess that means that you believe in the devil," he speculated.

            Sam's eyebrows were sewn together with worry, and incomprehension. "Why are you asking me all this?" she inquired. Dean met her thoughtful eyes, and was perplexed at what color to describe them with. Blue? Green? Gray? A mixture of all of them? He figured that would be more accurate. Somehow, Sam had skipped her biological father's toneless, graphite-colored eyes and her mother's dark browns, and developed a shade that was completely, perfectly unique. Completely, perfectly Sam. And Dean had never known what to call them, so he simply said they were _Sam's_ , because wasn't that what they were? The color was not the most important part; it was the fact that they belonged to her. He hated thinking about it in such a Nicholas Sparks-romance-novel-type way, but he could not think of any other way to word how he felt. However, despite the sappiness, he _so_ wished he could put a name with the glittering color that resided in her irises as she stared at him right then. When the light caught them, they were either sea-glass green or sky blue, and even that was differential. If it was natural sunlight, then the shade was green, and they made Dean remember summer days on a beach somewhere, playing with natural wonder that was sea-glass while their father worked. If it was any kind of artificial lighting, her eyes were blue, and Dean would think of depthless oceans that seemed enticing enough to want to drown in. But then, in the moonlight, the irises were hazel, like the center of a sunflower in an August sunrise, or carefully melting chocolate. In every essence of the words, they were one-of-a-kind, and as he looked into them now, he wished they weren't so filled with fear for him. He wished he did not have to tell her what Castiel had told him, to see the spark of fright behind her beautiful, indescribable eyes, but he knew he must.

            So he did.


	23. More Than A Feeling

                   Dean was asleep in his bed in the motel room, the tiny digital clock on the bedside table telling the room that it was half past one in the morning. About two weeks had passed since the incident with the Witnesses, and they were back to drifting around, searching for cases. Sam glanced at him. There was something about the peace on his face when he slept that she loved to see. Rarely when he was awake did she ever see him wearing anything other than a scowl or sarcastic grin. Observing the pure contentedness that overtook him as he rested seemed to make all her own troubles melt away for a bit.

            Almost sadly, she suddenly remembered the times as an eleven-year-old that she was prone to having violent nightmares, when John was out hunting and left them in a motel for a few days. It would just be her and Dean, then, and the dreams often had her waking up screaming. They varied from being trapped in a fire to being possessed by a demon and forced to do horrible things. The nightmares were vivid and painfully real. When she'd awaken, Dean would be in the room faster than the speed of light, and he would rub his eyes tiredly and sit by her side, holding her tightly until she calmed down. Then he would always ask her what she had dreamt of, and listen patiently as she explained, or he'd simply nod if she did not wish to share. Sometimes, she felt better just after having him near for a few minutes; on the nights that she had had a particularly disturbing dream, however, she would ask him to stay until she fell asleep. Dean never said no, not once. He had been seventeen during the time, and undoubtedly saw Sam as a frightened little girl, but he never replied with, "Not tonight, Sammy," or, "Come on, now, you're a big girl." It was always, "Of course," or, "Sure, move over." One time, she recalled, after a small fight with their father that left Dean a little distraught, he had responded to her request with, "Honestly, if you hadn't asked, I was going to. I... I kind of think I need some company tonight, too, Sammy." And he would always let her lay as far from or as close to him as she felt she needed to, and did not say a word either way. He was a presence, reassuring and constant, and Sam loved the feeling of knowing he was _there_. Each morning when she woke up, she would find that she had not had a bad dream while he had been there. Normally she turned her head to find Dean fast asleep beside her. That was when she really began to admire the peaceful look he adopted.

            Sam missed those times.

            Now, she quietly zipped up her backpack and swung it over her shoulder. The sound of a car approaching on the gravel outside hit her eardrums; Sam paused by the door, looking back at Dean one last time. He snorted once in his sleep, and she smiled. The door clicked shut behind her. She turned and saw a small gray car idling in front of the motel. Sam walked over to it and hopped in the passenger seat without so much as a glance at the driver.

            "Ready?" Ruby's voice asked her, though it was not a real question, Sam knew. "Definitely," she replied. Ruby pushed the car into drive and started away from the motel building.


	24. Back To My Roots

                   Flashes of red blinded Dean through his eyelids, though they were coming from inside his brain. He tossed and turned in the bed, the sheets entangling his legs, and sweat beaded on his forehead. In the dream, he saw images of rusted chains, coated thickly in blood. Scenes of torture equipment and a bottomless fiery pit, and the echoing, endless sound of screaming, were on a loop in his mind. They filled his heart with a terror that was unlike any other: one that was crippling, devoid of the adrenaline of normal fear, and left him gasping for air like a fish out of water. And a voice in his head just kept saying, _It's never going to end._

            Dean sat bolt upright in bed, breathing heavily. He put his head in his hands and stared at the blankets on top of him. They were wrapped intricately around his legs, like he had been trying to pull them from under the mattress without using his hands. He looked up with the intent of speaking to Sam, but instead his gaze was met with the form of a man in a trenchcoat. Dean sighed, very highly annoyed.

            "Hello, Dean," said Castiel in his low voice. "What were you dreaming about?" The angel sounded as if he already knew the answer, so Dean disregarded the fact that he had spoken. "What, do you get your freak on by watching other people sleep?" he demanded. Castiel tilted his head to the right, his blue eyes shining and curious, and Dean scrubbed a hand over his face. "What do you want?" he added exasperatedly.

            "Listen to me," the angel said, his tone suddenly full of urgency. Dean sat up as Castiel came closer to the bed. "You have to stop it." The hunter shook his head, uncomprehending. "Stop what?" he asked. Without a word, Castiel put his pointer and middle finger together and gently pressed them to Dean's forehead. The world around Dean faded away with the touch.

            When he opened his eyes again, he was being prodded in the side by something hard. He straightened his back and sat up, staring around him. He was no longer in the motel room, but surrounded by buildings on all sides. In front of him was a row of what appeared to be shops on the other side of a street. He seemed to be laying on a bench, and he attempted to stretch the muscles in his spine when he remembered the firm object that had been poking him. His eyes rose to meet the face of a chubby police officer, who was speaking to him. "Move it, buddy," he told Dean. "You can't sleep here."

            Dean blinked a few times. "Okay," he said. "Sleep... where...?" The officer gave him a sort of pitying look as he replied, "Anywhere but here, son." He waited for Dean to get up off the bench, then gave him a pat on the shoulder and strolled off toward the opposite street. Dean stared after him, dumbstruck.

            _How the hell did I get here?_ he thought.

            He pulled the cellphone from his jacket pocket and flipped it open, pressing the number one button to speed dial Sam. A dial tone rang dully in his ear, and he glared at the screen. In bold white letters it told him, _NO SIGNAL._ "Perfect," he grumbled. Once more he cast his eyes around the street, looking for a sign or anything that would tell him where he was. The only thing he saw that looked moderately appealing was a diner. A small neon sign in the window told the world that "Jaybird's Diner has the best coffee in the United States!" Dean jogged across the road and walked through the doors, a blast of cool air drying the sweat that still covered his face. He strode up to the counter, seating himself next to a handsome young man with dark hair, a newspaper lying unopened in front of him.

            "Hey," Dean said to him, "where the hell am I?" The other looked at him, his brows furrowed, and Dean could have sworn he knew his face from somewhere. It pricked at the back of his mind like a needle. "Jaybird's Diner," the young man told him, smiling. Dean nodded once and tried not to seem impolite. "Yeah, thanks, but I mean, uh... city and state," he answered.

            The man appeared even more confused at that. After a brief second of staring at Dean curiously, he responded slowly, "Lawrence, Kansas."

            Dean sighed in mild shock, glaring down at the counter in front of him. "Lawrence," he repeated under his breath, as if it were a curse. _Of all the goddamn places in the world that Castiel could have sent me_ , he thought angrily, _why the hell did it have to be here?_

"Hey, you okay, buddy?" prompted the young man, angling his body a bit so that he could see Dean's face. The hunter shook his head slowly. "Yeah," he breathed. "Rough night." The other man gave him a sympathetic look, and Dean could see it though he was not meeting the stranger's eye. Then he turned and said, "Uh, coffee here, Reg."

            "Coming right up," a voice answered from somewhere in the kitchen.

            Again Dean pulled his cellphone out of his jacket and flicked it open. The screen still said there was no signal, so he asked, "Can you tell me where I can get reception on this thing?" The other man's eyes narrowed at the cell, his eyebrows sewn together. "The USS Enterprise?" he said, laughing. Dean almost replied with a smart comment, but someone set a cup of coffee on the counter in front of him, and he turned to thank them. The words died on his lips, however, when he saw the man's attire. The first thought that popped into Dean's mind was that he looked like a bad Sonny Bono impersonator: clad in tie-dye and fringe like a 1970s hippie. He assumed this man to be Reg.

            "Thanks," he managed to say after a moment. Then he nodded at Reg's brown leather fringe. "Nice threads. You know Sonny and Cher broke up, right?"

            The younger man beside Dean looked at Dean in surprise. "Sonny and Cher broke up?" Dean stared at him, then cast his eyes around the diner. Everyone was dressed in 1970s-era clothing and a jukebox in the corner was slowly turning a vinyl over. He glanced down at the newspaper that the stranger next to him was reading, and the date jumped out at him. _Monday, April 30, 1973._ "Seventy-three," Dean mouthed soundlessly, his mind attempting to process this information. Castiel's voice rang through his head. _Listen to me. You have to stop it_.

            _What would I need to stop that required me to be sent back to freakin' 1973?_

            "Hey, Winchester!"

            Dean looked around, and so did the man beside him. An older gentleman was walking into the diner, a bowler hat in his hand. He strode up to the man beside Dean and shook his hand. "Son of a bitch," said the newcomer. "How you doin', Corporal?"

            "Hey, Mr. D," grinned the young man. Dean stared, wondering how popular his last name could possibly be, as the oldest of the three added, "I heard you were back." The apparent Corporal nodded. "Yeah, for a little while, now."

            Mr. D smiled fatherly down at him. "Well, it's good to have you home, John. Damn good."

            Dean's heart stopped altogether for a good two seconds. His chest contracted, both swelling and deflating at once. He was sure that his eyes had grown at least four times their size, and that they were burning a hole in the back of the Corporal's head, but he did not care. John Winchester, Corporal, back home in Lawrence, Kansas. The odds of something like that being a coincidence were nonexistent. Castiel had to have sent him back to this time for a reason, and Dean figured this was the reason. But at the moment, he could do no more than stare at the man who sat beside him, at his thick, dark hair, his toned muscles, his handsome face, his kind features. This was a man Dean had never known had even lived, much less thrived. A man he wished he _had_ known. "Dad?" he whispered. Luckily, his voice went unheard.

            "Say hello to your old man for me," Mr. D was telling John. The young man replied, "You got it, sir." Mr. D slapped him on the back good-naturedly, then walked to a table near the back of the diner. John, smiling to himself, turned back to his paper and noticed Dean's wide, shocked eyes trained on him. Dean's father peered at him curiously. "Do we know each other?" he inquired. Dean took a deep breath. "I guess not."

            John nodded, rolled up the newspaper, and got up from his stool. He gave Dean a long look. "Take it easy, pal," he said seriously, as if he was worried about Dean. The hunter miraculously managed to return a smile. "Yeah." John left the diner with a certain confidence to his step that Dean was entirely unused to seeing.

            There was a beat of hesitation, and then he stood and walked after him.


	25. Family Matters

             His father was already halfway down the street when Dean spotted him again. John rounded a corner, and a moment later, so did Dean, but he was met head-on by a wall of flesh and clothing. The first thing he saw was a business suit, and debilitating blue eyes.

            "What is this?" he half-shouted at Castiel, who frowned. "What does it _look_ like?" he replied. Dean was mildly impressed with the angel's show of sarcasm, but quickly brushed it off. "Is it real?" he asked a bit more quietly. Even he heard the underlining hope in his voice. Castiel nodded. "Very."

            Dean glanced down at his shoes, then back up at Castiel's face. "Okay, so... what? Angels got their hands on some Deloreans?" he demanded, crossing his arms over his chest. "How did I get here?"

            Castiel furrowed his eyebrows, appearing to search for an answer. "Time is... fluid, Dean," he said after a minute. He moved his hands through the air as he spoke, as if to demonstrate. "It's not easy, but we _can_ bend it, on occasion."

            "Well bend it back, or tell me what the hell I'm doing here!"

            "I told you," the angel replied, genuinely seeming confused. "You have to stop it." Dean uncrossed his arms and threw them out to his sides. "Stop what? Huh?" Castiel dropped his gaze. "What, is there something nasty after my dad?" A car honked in the street behind him, and instinctively Dean turned to see if someone was approaching. When he looked back at Castiel, the angel was gone.

            He groaned loudly. "Oh come _on!_ Are you allergic to straight answers, you son of a bitch?" he shouted at the sky, but he knew there was no point. Heaving a great, heavy sigh, Dean started walking again, following his father. He jogged a little, and after coming to the end of the street, he just barely caught a glimpse of the back of John's coat taking a sharp right. Dean sped up his pace, while still staying far enough behind that he did not draw attention to himself.

            Dean got stuck at a _don't walk_ light, and had to wait a few minutes before he could continue, which put him a good bit behind John. When he found him again, just around another wall, he spotted him talking to a man in the middle of a car lot. The sign that hung on the chain-link fence surrounding it had _Rainbow Motors Car Dealership_ written on it in big, multicolored letters. Dean approached the lot cautiously, hearing the last part of the conversation.

            "... A fine young man like yourself, just starting out?" the dealer was saying to John. "How about I take off another two hundred and fifty?" John rubbed his chin, considering, just as Dean slipped in and crept around the cars nearer to him. "Let's do it," his father told the man, who wore a hideous carpet-colored suit and neon blue tie. He clapped his hands together. "I'll get the paperwork!" he exclaimed happily, and went into the flat, one-story building behind him.

            Dean got within a few feet of his father when he noticed the sun glint off something shiny and black. He glanced over at the source, and felt his heart jump into his throat. There sat his car, his 1967 Chevy Impala, gleaming and beautiful. He touched the hood of it gingerly, as if he did not want to disturb it, then leaned back against it and looked back at John. His father had walked over to a beige VW van and was rubbing the headlights.

            "That's not the one you want," said Dean thoughtlessly. John whipped around, surprised to hear another voice, and at once Dean regretted speaking. The look he received from John was both curious and suspicious. "You following me?" he asked. Dean shook his head quickly. "No, no, I was just passing by. Honest," he said, using his pointer finger to draw an invisible _X_ over his heart. "I never got to thank you for that cup of coffee this morning. I was a little out of it."

            "More than a little."

            Dean swallowed his sarcastic remark out of habit. Being polite was taking somewhat of a toll on him. "Let me repay the favor," he told John. He patted the hood of the Impala he was leaning against. "This is the one you want." John took a few steps closer to him. "Oh, yeah? You... you know something about cars?" he inquired, half skeptically and half hopefully. Dean nodded, and nostalgia flooded his insides.

            "My dad taught me everything I know." John's eyes flicked to Dean's feet and back up again, almost as if he was sizing him up, trying to make sense of what he'd just said. Dean cleared his throat and went on, "And this, uh, this is a _great_ car." He turned and opened up the hood of the Impala. John joined him at his side. As Dean spoke, he pointed to what he was describing, and some distant part of him remembered teaching Sam the parts of this car, a long time ago. He fought the urge to smile.

            "Three-twenty-seven, four barrel, two hundred seventy-five horses. A little TLC and this thing is cherry."

            John was nodding along with Dean as he talked. "You know man, you're right," he told him. Dean glanced at the man, then nodded over his shoulder at the van. "Then what're you buyin' that thing for?" he asked. John shrugged a little sheepishly. "I kinda promised someone I would." Dean let out a breathy scoff. "Over a '67 Chevy? I mean, come on, this is the car of a lifetime! Trust me, this thing's still gonna be badass when it's forty."

            His father considered him for a moment, then held out his hand. "John Winchester," he introduced himself smilingly. "Thanks." Dean hesitated for a half a second before gripping his hand back, and a million of his aliases ran through his head. He thought desperately within the span of a millisecond for a fake last name to give John, but what he said was not one that crossed his mind.

            "Dean Van Halen. And thank _you_." John nodded once, still beaming, and let go of Dean's hand. He stepped around the side of the Impala and peered in its open windows at the upholstery. "So I was in pretty rough shape this morning, huh?" said Dean, shutting the hood. John chortled, "No kidding."

            "I've been hung over before but, hey, I was - _whew_ _-_ I was gettin' chills in that diner, man. You didn't feel any of those cold spots, did you?"

            "Nope."

            "Huh. Y'know, I swore I smelled something weird too. Like... like rotten eggs." Dean laughed nonchalantly. "You didn't happen to smell any sulfur by chance?"

            "... No..."

            "No." Dean scratched his neck. "There been any cattle mutilations in town recently - ?"

            " _Okay_ , mister!" said John, looking at him like he was crazy as he straightened up from the car window. "Stop it." Dean half sighed, half chuckled. "Yeah, if only I knew when to stop." He heard the door to the building nearby open, and saw the dealer shuffling papers on his way out. Dean stepped toward John and put his hand on his shoulder. "Listen, um... Watch out for yourself, okay?"

            John furrowed his eyebrows, a trait Dean realized, at that moment, that he had inherited, and that Sam had picked up. He smiled weakly. "Yeah, sure," his father replied unsurely. Dean patted the hood of the car one more time, and quickly strode off the lot. As he reached the opening in the fence, he heard the dealer ask, "So?" and John answer, "I'll take this one."

            Dean grinned at the ground as he walked away. Dusk was falling fast, and he needed to find a ride before John left the dealership in the Impala. He walked up the street a ways before spotting a car. It was egg-yolk-yellow, and looked older than him, but it was all he had. Dean made his way over to it casually, peering around for any onlookers, and quietly slipped his lock picking tool into the key slot on the handle. He jiggled it around a bit before he touched the handle, confused as to why it had not clicked open yet. An intense wave of stupidity washed over him as he noticed it had not been locked to begin with. _Where's Sammy to laugh at me when I actually want her to?_ he thought, silently resenting Castiel more and more for not sending Sam back with him. He opened the door and plopped onto the seat. Bending over, he popped out a panel directly under the wheel, revealing the wiring. He gently took a red wire between his thumb and forefinger, and touched the exposed copper head of it very briefly to a white one. They sparked, then went out. Dean did it again, and once more, until the car hummed to life around him. The radio flickered on, and a man's voice began announcing a baseball game that was happening somewhere. He shut the door and settled into the seat, buckling himself in and putting it in drive.

            By the time he had driven up the street and circled back around to the dealership, John had already signed off on the Impala and was getting into it. The sun was setting rapidly, tinting the sky an attractive lavender hue. Dean watched the clouds drift darkly across the tip of the drooping orange sphere, and let his mind wander. He thought about how different his father was as a young man: kinder and friendlier, and he seemed relatively calm, to Dean. He wondered what could possibly be after John in this time period. Obviously it wasn't anything life-threatening, because if it was, then Dean would not exist. So why, then, did Castiel talk about what was happening so urgently? And why did the angel always disappear before giving Dean the full story? That annoyed him, but something cut across the thought. What was he doing in his time? Had he simply vanished or was he still asleep in his bed? Castiel had said that all of this was very real, so Dean figured that meant that he was here physically. He worried, for a moment, about how Sam was reacting to his being gone. Or had time been frozen there? His head hurt just thinking about it, and something in his chest hurt when he thought about Sam's expression upon seeing no one in the bed beside her.


	26. I Know I Picked A Path That You Would Never Want For Me

               The Impala pulled out of the dealership lot, John smiling confidently behind the wheel, and Dean pressed his foot to the gas pedal. John took a left as he drove out the gate, which was a right to Dean, and Dean followed about four hundred feet behind him. It was dark out now, so he did not have a problem going unnoticed by his father. He trailed him for a few minutes before the bright red brake lights shone on the back of the Chevy. Dean stopped his stolen car and maneuvered it so that it was completely hidden by the shadow of some trees, taking the key out of the ignition. He rolled the window down and waited. John pulled up in front of a yellow house and got out of the car. He leaned against it, and Dean heard a door open nearby.

            A pretty blonde woman ran over to John, smiling widely. Something about her was familiar to Dean, and a strange feeling embedded itself in the pit of his stomach. "Hey," John greeted her. He put a hand on her hip and gently kissed her cheek. Dean squinted through the windshield and saw that her facial expression had changed. She did not look happy.

            "What's this?" she inquired, gesturing toward the Impala. John grinned. "My car."  The young woman gave him a look, then walked around the back of the car. She examined every inch of it with John tailing her heels. "What happened to the van?" she asked him.

            John let out a breath of air, his eyes wide and his smile bright. "Mary, this is better than the van! This has got a three-twenty-seven! A _four_ barrel carburetor!"

            Dean's blood turned to ice in his veins as he suddenly realized who the woman was. The name, the hair, and the kind face all connected dots in his mind. She was so much younger than he had ever seen her, even in photographs, but he now recognized her. The last time he saw her, the _real_ her, she had been a ghost, and saved Sam's life by sacrificing herself once more. There had been other times, though. When he had been poisoned by a Djinn, for instance, and thrust into a world that would have been had she never died. A world where he and Sam were not close, or could even be called friends. But now, Dean stared at his mother, a normal girl going on a normal date, and his heart both fluttered and broke inside his chest. A pain that was, somehow, beautiful. "Mom," he whispered in shock.

            Mary shook her head at John and climbed in the passenger seat. John got in after her, and he drove off down the street again. Dean was forced to clear his head and follow while they made their way back into town. After about five minutes, John pulled up to a diner and parked. As Dean circled around the parking lot, he saw John open the car door for Mary and walk her inside. They were seated at a table directly in the center of the long window that made up half of one wall. Dean drove into a spot and shut off the car, then ran quietly over to the diner's wall. He stood just out of sight, gazing at his mother and father inside. Mary's shimmery blonde hair caught the light, and Dean breathed, "Sammy, wherever you are... Mom is a _babe_." Then he cringed at himself. "God. I'm going to Hell. Again."

            Through the widow he heard John say as he took a sip of his milkshake, "I should just talk to him." Mary smiled softly and shook her head. "My dad's being my dad, John," she replied. "It's not you."

            John scoffed and leaned over the table. "How is it not me?" he asked incredulously. "He's been like this for how many years?"

            Mary's eyelashes batted against her high cheekbones. "He's just protective over me, that's all," she told him. "He doesn't want me to - "

            " - Hook up with the mechanic from a family of mechanics?"

            " _No!_ " Mary gasped. Her eyebrows were pulled together, whether in pain or thought Dean did not know. She reached over and put her hand over John's, her thumb rubbing small circles on his knuckles. "Hey, I love you, for exactly what you are." She smiled, and John returned it. For a moment, Dean could have sworn that her eyes flicked toward him, but he disregarded the feeling. There was no way she would see him in such darkness. "I'll be right back," she said to John. Making for the restroom, Mary walked away from the table. Dean focused on John as he put his hand into his pocket and withdrew a little velvet box. He opened it, and a diamond ring sparkled.

            "Why are you following us?"

            Dean whipped around and saw Mary standing behind him, her arms crossed over her chest. He spluttered incoherently briefly, but did not get the chance to speak, because Mary brought her knee up and it connected with his stomach. She threw him against a metal container that stood next to the diner, bringing her fist back to punch him in the face. He ducked as her small hand flew at him, and stepped to the side. "Are you crazy?" he demanded, eyes wide. Still she continued to attack him. He backed up against the brick of the diner, and managed to grab her arms just before she could hit him. "You've been trailing us since my house," she accused. Her eyes shone like fiery blue daggers. "I don't know what you're talking about - "

            " _Really?_ " She jerked her arms from his grip and shoved her elbow against his chest, knocking the wind out of him. He wheezed a bit, then took hold of her thin wrist and pulled it upward. She reached the other hand for it, and he grabbed that too. Dean whirled her around and now had Mary pinned up to the wall. She struggled under his hold.

            He was breathing heavily after the grapple. "Okay," he sighed. "How about we talk about this, huh? I'm, um, I'm Dean." She glared at him, half with anger and half with fright. "Let me go!" she ordered. Her head turned to the side and her eyes squeezed shut, as if this would give her extra strength. Dean furrowed his brows as something on her arm glinted silver. His eyes fell on a bracelet hanging there, and it was laden with protective charms. He recognized each of them: demon-warding, witch protection, the whole nine yards.

            "Are you a hunter?" he asked lowly. Mary met his eye fearfully. "Are you something that needs to be hunted?" she responded, feigning bravery. He chuckled and softened his grip, but did not release. "No. I promise," he added, noting her eye-roll. His lip curled up over his teeth, revealing the top set of gums. "Not a vampire, or a werewolf," he said. Mary ceased her movement, curiosity burning in her ocean-like blues. "I'm just a guy."

            She smiled weakly. "Then why follow us? How do you know us?" Dean finally removed his hands from her wrists, and she slunk against the wall. He rubbed the back of his neck. "Honestly, I don't. Not really. I can try to explain if you'll let me."

            Mary gave him a long look, then glanced at John through the window. "Not now," she replied. "I'll try to talk later." She nodded once, and then jogged back over to the door and her table. Dean let out a lengthy sigh, unaware he had been holding his breath. He did not even pay attention to John and Mary as they finished their milkshakes; he simply walked back to the car he had hotwired and sat down, allowing the conversation to sink in.

            _Mom was a hunter._


	27. Dead On Arrival

                   After a while, Mary and John exited the diner and drove out of the parking lot. Dean followed a bit more closely this time. John pulled up to Mary's house within a few minutes, and Dean saw them kiss through the back windshield. He smiled slightly while Mary climbed out of the car and waved to his father as he took off. Dean turned off the car he was in, stepped out, and walked cautiously toward the woman. She saw him in a split second, though he was hidden under the cover of trees.

            "Dean, right?" she said, her voice calmer than before. Dean nodded. "I'm not sure you should come in." He moved a bit closer to her and gestured at the house shakily. "You can trust me," he replied, and Mary let out a breath of air through her nose. "I mean, come on, we're all hunters, right? We're... we're practically family."

            This earned him a strange look as she responded, "Yeah, the thing is, my dad... he's a little, um..."

            "Oh, I've gotta meet him."

            Mary looked at him, surprised. "You've heard of him?" Her tone was not curious, nor flattered. It was nervous, and Dean stifled the excitement in his chest. "Clearly not enough," he said. Mary pursed her lips together and gave a single nod, then turned and began walking toward her house. Dean followed, his legs stiff and mechanical. She unlocked the front door and let him in, shutting it softly behind her. The front room was just a hallway, paneled in cherry wood and crème-colored paint, and at the end of it was a set of stairs. On either side of Dean were openings, the one on the right leading into what appeared to be a study. A little farther ahead was another, and it had light pouring from inside. There was the quiet sound of a laugh track playing on a television. "Mom? Dad?" she called. "I'm home."

            "In here, Mary," a man's voice answered. She shot Dean a look out of the corner of her eye as she strode forward, entering the opening on the left. Its walls as well were cherry wood, but the trim was a watered-down green. The furniture - one couch and two armchairs - was simple brown cushion. A bald man sat in one of the recliners, looking at the little television set in front of him. Dean could see a woman in an apron in the next room over, which seemed to be the kitchen. The setup reminded him of Bobby's house.

            Suddenly, the man's eyes snapped toward Dean, and Dean froze. "Who is this?" asked who he assumed was Mary's father, his grandfather. Mary straightened herself a bit. "Dad, this is Dean. Dean, this is my father, Samuel Campbell."

            Dean never knew why his parents had chosen to rename Sam when they took her in, or why they had picked the name _Sam_ in the first place. Now, he sort of understood, and stared a bit longer than he should have. Mary went on, "I met him tonight because he had been following John and I - "

            "You brought your stalker home?"

            " _No,_ " Mary said firmly at the same time Dean added, "Not a stalker!" Mary's father stared at her disbelievingly. "He's a hunter, too, Dad," she finished. The fervidity of her tone had long since died, replaced now with a sort of frightened complacence. Dean could tell she was somewhat afraid of her father, just as he had been afraid of John. He felt an unexpected closeness to her. "Sit," said Samuel, gesturing to the other armchair. Dean sat, noticing uncomfortably that it was almost directly across from Mary's father. Mary seated herself on the couch between them. "Dad, listen, he's a nice - "

            "Mary, quiet," he ordered. Her mouth shut and she looked down at her knees. Dean glanced from her to Samuel, and a burning protectiveness erupted in his chest. "So," Samuel said to Dean. "You're a hunter?"

            Dean nodded.

            "Well, tell me something, _mister hunter_. Do you kill vampires with wooden stakes or silver?" Dean half-smiled, knowing full well what was happening here. "Neither," he answered. "You cut off their heads." Mary beamed, though she still had not looked up again, and Samuel leaned back in his chair. Dean could see he was impressed. "So, did I pass your test?" he asked his grandfather.

            Samuel pursed his lips. "Yep. Now get out of my house."

            "Dad!" exclaimed Mary. Dean's eyebrows shot up on his forehead as Samuel disregarded his daughter had spoken, and said directly to Dean, "I don't trust other hunters, Dean. Don't want their help, don't want them around my family."

            The woman in the other room threw the dishrag she was holding into the sink and called, "Knock it off, Samuel." Dean's grandfather rolled his eyes and turned his head to the left toward her. "He's a hunter!" he said back, grumpy. His wife walked into the room, rubbing her hands together. "Who just passed your little pop quiz," she replied, and she smiled at Dean, "and now I am inviting him to dinner. Are you hungry?"

            "Starving," said Dean. The woman nodded in a friendly sort of way. "Good. I'm Deanna, and you've met my husband Samuel. Now, go wash up." She smiled again and strode back into the kitchen.

            Dean gave a breathy chuckle as he looked over at Mary. "Samuel and Deanna?" he inquired incredulously. Mary nodded. " _Really?_ " She gave him a look, uncomprehending and confused, so he just laughed and got up from the chair. He knew she would not understand, not for a long time. All he wanted was for Sam to be here to see this with him. He wanted her to see their mother, and realize why she had been renamed _Sam_ , and to experience what she had never had the opportunity to know. As Dean washed his hands in the hallway bathroom, he thought about the fact that Sam had never known Mary like he had known her. Sam had been half a year old when Mary died; Dean had been six. He remembered Mary cutting the crusts off his sandwiches, and helping him write his name, and teaching him how to feed Sam correctly, and tucking him in at night, saying, "Angels are watching over you." He could remember all of it, and he desperately wanted Sam here so she could have something about their mother to hold onto.

            When Dean reentered the kitchen, the Campbells were seating themselves around the table. Deanna had placed mashed potatoes, peas, carrots, and roast beef in the center of it. Samuel sat at the head, his wife at the other end, and Mary in between them. Dean took the seat opposite his mother. As soon as he sat down, they began eating. A few minutes passed in silence, with Dean not quite sure how to act, when Deanna touched his arm. "First time in Lawrence, Dean?" she asked politely.

            "Well, it's been a while," he replied truthfully. "Things sure have changed... I think." His grandmother gave him a kind smile, and he was hit with the fact that he had never known her, either. He wondered briefly what had become of them before he was born. "You working a job?" Samuel said, swallowing a large bite. Dean shifted in his chair. "Yeah, maybe."

            "What's that mean?"

            "It means I don't trust other hunters either, Samuel." Dean looked at his grandfather challengingly, and the man returned his stare, something like respect glinting in his cold eyes. Mary cleared her throat. "Hey, Dean," she said, "so, why _were_ you following me and John? You said you'd tell me later, and... well, it's later." She smiled shyly.

            He chewed on a forkful of the savory meat for a moment before answering. "Mm, I thought something was after your, um, boyfriend, but I don't think that anymore." Deanna laughed under her breath, "John Winchester mixing it up with spirits. Can you imagine?" Mary glanced over at her father just as Samuel made a face, his nose scrunched up as if he had smelled something unpleasant.

            "I saw that!" she said accusingly. "What?" he replied. "That sour lemon look," Mary told him, raising her eyebrows. Dean watched as Samuel sighed. "Now, hold on! John's a really, really nice... naïve civilian." Mary scoffed. "So what? You'd rather me be with a guy like this?" She pointed across the table angrily at Dean, who shook his head violently. "No, no," he said. "Nope." Samuel rolled his eyes. "Mary, of course not," he told his daughter. "It's just that I - "

            "That's enough. Both of you," ordered Deanna firmly. "We have company." Mary blinked a few times in Dean's direction, and he attempted to give her a grateful smile. He feared it looked more like a grimace than anything else. "So, what about you, Samuel?" he asked his grandfather after a beat. "You, uh, working a job?"

            Samuel did not meet Dean's gaze. "Might be." Mary rolled her eyes and said, "He's working a job on the Whitshire Farm." Her father glared at her, indignant, but Mary kept her cool. Dean cleared his throat awkwardly. "Whitshire," he repeated. "Why does that name sound familiar to me?"

            "Well, it's been all over the papers," replied Samuel. "Tom Whitshire. Got tangled up in a combine a few towns over."

            Dean shrugged, taking a bite of mashed potatoes. "That kind of thing happens." His grandfather swallowed. "So why was he on it in the first place when his crops are all dead?" he shot back. Dean nodded and said, "Demonic omens?"

            "That's what I've gotta find out."

            "What about the rest of the town?" asked Dean, this time glancing at Mary, too. "Did you find anything on the web... of information that you have assembled?" He caught himself, but not very smoothly. Luckily none of the Campbells appeared to notice. "Electrical storms, maybe," said Deanna in reply. "The weather service graphs should be here on Friday."

            Dean furrowed his brows. "By mail?" Samuel scoffed, "No, we hired a jet liner to fly 'em to us overnight."

            "You know," said Dean, ignoring this comment, "it sounds to me like we might be hunting the same thing here. If we go in there in numbers, we could take care of this real quick." His grandfather looked at him as if he were slow and growled, "What part of 'we work alone' do you not understand, son?"

            Mary opened her mouth as if to say something, but seemed to decide against it at the last minute. She gazed apologetically at Dean, and he swallowed hard. By this time, most of the plates on the table were empty, so he took his chance. Glancing at the clock hanging on the wall, which told him it was nearly nine o'clock, he fake-gasped and said, "Geez, I didn't realize how late it was. I've got to get going." He stood up from the table and took Deanna's hand in his own softly. "Thank you very much for your hospitality, ma'am," he told her. She smiled. Then he looked at his mother and said, "I'll see you around, Mary." The young woman nodded once, her curled blonde hair bouncing a bit.

            Lastly, he turned toward Samuel. "Good luck on your hunt, sir," he said respectfully. Without waiting for a reply, he walked out of the kitchen and into the hallway, making for the door. Before he reached it, however, he got distracted by a small photo grid that was hanging on the wall. In all the pictures, his mother was grinning at the camera from several different ages. Dean thought she looked to be around four in the oldest one. His throat felt blocked by something very solid and dry, so he quickly strode from the house. As he opened the door, he distinctly heard Mary's voice say, chastising, "See what your stubbornness did? He just wanted to help."

            Dean stood on the front steps for a few moments, simply breathing the cool night air. The interaction had left him incredibly drained, and he wanted to find a place nearby to sleep. Although Samuel had seemed very determined to not allow Dean to come along, Dean knew what to do. He was going to set out early the next morning, find the Whitshire Farm, and talk to this man Tom's wife. Whatever Castiel wanted him to do, he was going to do it.

            Then he was going to go home and tell Sam all about their mother.


	28. Should've Known Right From The Start, You Can't Predict The End

                   He drove back into town and found a small costume shop, where he purchased a black dress shirt and detachable clerical collar. The clerk gave him a strange look as he paid, but Dean did not even attempt to explain why he was buying it. He did, however, ask the elderly man if there was a motel in town, and the gentleman gave him directions to it. He thanked him as he left. When Dean got back to the car, he put the outfit in the passenger seat, and sat for a minute, breathing and admiring the sound of the silence.

            The lights in the stores around him were gradually turning out, one by one, as their owners went home for the evening. He couldn't remember much of Lawrence from when he was a child, which made seeing it now feel like hearing a favorite song after years of not listening to it. The sensation was new, yet strangely familiar, and made Dean's chest swell as if it was a balloon expanding. Nothing about the city was particularly notable or remarkable in any way, and he figured that outwardly, it appeared to be one of the Hallmark-type towns where everybody knew everybody and most people were born, raised, and buried here. Usually, Dean would write off the serene sameness of it all by calling it strange, or too normal for his liking. But now, as he stared about the street, he understood why things such as this had always seemed too humdrum for him. He had never had it-a life, one with a mom and a dad, in a town where he would get his first job at some local place, and he knew his friends from kindergarten to graduation day. Or, at least, he had not had it for very long. Sam had never had it at all, but he knew she wanted it more than anything. So, as he started the stolen car once more, all the thoughts he had been thinking seemed to end up at the same point, and somewhere deep in his mind, he made a promise to himself. Somehow, someway, someday, he would give Sam this kind of life.

            Dean approached the motel with caution, so as not to draw too much attention to his presence. With his plastic bag of newly-bought clothes, though, this seemed somewhat inevitable. The woman at the desk had a tired, worn look on her face, and Dean guessed she was only a few years older than him. A wedding ring sparkled on her left hand. Her red hair was tied in a tight bun on the back of her head; the nametag on her chest read, _Hello, my name is Tracie!_ He smiled at her. "Hey, can I get a room?" he asked politely. She nodded and glanced down at her computer, saying, "Sure. Is a king okay?"

            "Yeah, that's great. How much for one night?"

            "Thirty-five."

            He blinked a few times, allowing the price to set in. He had become so used to paying at least seventy dollars per night for him and Sam to stay in a motel somewhere that something this cheap came as quite a shock. Then he remembered that this was about forty years into the past, and beamed at Tracie. "Awesome." He fished in his jacket pocket for the cash, and pulled out a twenty and three fives. Luckily he had found some money stashed in the car's glove compartment, which was how he paid for the priest's outfit as well. The clerk handed him the key. "Third floor," she instructed. He walked off toward the stairs, his plastic bag in tow, and thanked her over his shoulder. Jogging up the concrete steps, he got to the third floor landing in a couple of seconds and began searching for his room, _28._ The golden-plated numbers jumped out at him when he reached the end of the hall, and he unlocked the door. Inside, there was a small kitchenette, an ugly pea-green couch, a television, and one bed. Dean staggered over to it and fell face-down on the mattress, breathing in the musty smell of the sheets.

            _Now I really wish Sam was here_ , he thought dismally. His heart ached with longing, a feeling he was rather accustomed to but still did not enjoy. He could not recall the last time he slept in a room without her being in the next bed over, or on a couch nearby. Other than Hell, that is, but he was fighting his hardest to keep those memories at bay, for now. And even then, he did not sleep much anyway.

            As he flipped over on his back and kicked his shoes off, sliding under the covers fully clothed, he wondered for perhaps the billionth time that day what it was that he was supposed to be stopping. The angel had been so ambiguous about this situation, and it drove him crazy. Although Castiel had said everything around him was real - and his mother's fists had certainly felt it - , Dean still couldn't quite comprehend the weight of that. He had truly been sent _back in time_. His mother and father had met him, and smiled at him, and treated him with kindness. He'd seen how their love was before they were married, before things had gotten a bit rocky.

            Still, regardless of how vivid everything was, Dean had a horrible inkling feeling that none of it was as tangible as it seemed. He could not help but remember, again, the dream he had been thrust into by the Djinn's poison oh-so-long ago. Mary had never been killed, and John had never become a hunter, and therefore neither had Sam and Dean. Sam had still been adopted, this time legally, which made her off-limits to him. She had been engaged to Jesse, who had never died, consequently. The world was so perfect because his mother was alive, and John had not become the abusive, alcoholic, paranoid maniac that her death had driven him to be. But it was so _imperfect_ because his chances with Sam were nonexistent, and they were about as close as Washington and Florida. That sort of bittersweet prize was what he feared was surrounding him now, in the form of his parents.

            Deep in his heart, something told him that the Whitshire Farm was his first big clue to figuring out what Castiel wanted him to stop. So, with heavy eyelids and a sad, lonely feeling of emptiness, Dean drifted off to sleep.

            And this time, for the first time since returning from the pit, he did not dream about Hell. This time, Dean dreamed about Sam.


	29. I Was Broken, For A Long Time, But It's Over Now

A year passed, and a million things happened. Information was learned, people were met, friends were lost, and plans were made and abandoned. Dean was sent back in time once more after his first endeavor, in which he watched as Mary made a deal with the demon Azazel to save John's life, consequently losing her father in the process. The second incident occurred because a pair of rogue angels named Anna and Uriel were going after the Winchesters to ensure that the young hunters were never born. Sam was able to go as well when Castiel sent Dean back, and she was in awe of her adoptive mother throughout the whole while. Near the end of their time with her, once the threat of Uriel and Anna killing them was neutralized, Sam and Dean explained to Mary that they were her children. He had to add in a bit more detail when it came to Sam's personal history, but it did not take much for Mary to believe them. Something inside Sam thought that it was because of how similar Dean and his mother were; he had inherited her bravery and stubbornness. Dean desperately tried to convince her not to go into Sam's nursery on that day in 1983, but when they returned to their own time, he knew she had never listened.

The trust the Winchesters had in Castiel grew exponentially over the course of the year. He became not only Dean's savior, but one of their best friends. Often against the other angels' wishes, he fought alongside the hunters, because Castiel was on the side of humans amidst a war between Heaven and Earth. He once told Dean that he rebelled against Heaven and everything he ever knew to save him from Hell. God had disappeared from the picture, angels were murdering angels, and Castiel was just as lost as Sam and Dean.

Along the way, the two young Winchesters fought, as do most people who love each other. But one day, Dean discovered that Sam had been lying about Ruby still being alive, and as a result, finally found out her biggest secret: that she had been drinking the demon's blood to strengthen her telepathic powers. The falling out was one of their worst. Sam did her best to make him understand that she believed this was the right thing, that the demon blood was making her a better hunter, but he would hear none of it. So she decided to go it alone for a while - or forever, whichever worked the longest. She was presently a state away from him, though she didn't know it, lying in her bed in a motel room. It felt different, without Dean in the other bed. It felt different not _having_ another bed in the room. It felt different being on her own.

It was not a good kind of different.

Sam shifted beneath the comforter of the unfamiliar bed and turned on her right side. Her eyes were tightly shut, but she could not sleep. Too many thoughts were in her mind. Most of them were about Dean, as much as she tried to deny it. She'd left a month and a half ago, but it still hurt. She hated that she kept such a catastrophic secret from him, and she hated that he did not realize how much better it was making her, and she hated herself for hating everything.

Who would be there to sit at the edge of the bed when she had nightmares? Who would hold her hand until she stopped shaking? Who would lie beside her and wrap their arms around her and softly remind her that she was safe, that dreams were dreams and nothing could hurt her? Sam had always despised the idea of _needing_ someone. The popular notion of women having to have a man to function was sickening, at the very least. She thought herself to be above such petty, shallow emotions, but as she lay there, the coldness of the room seeping deep through her bones, she realized she was wrong.

She needed Dean, and she needed him with such an urgency that it felt perilous.

Just as her eyes began to relax and the heaviness in her muscles overtook her, she heard a soft rustling nearby. Groggily Sam opened her eyes, rubbing her forehead, and saw a mass standing before her. She jumped several inches off the bed, her heart nearly stopping, when she could make out the outer form of a trenchcoat. Sighing heavily, she glared at the person.

"Cas," she groaned, "don't do that." As her eyes adjusted, she saw the angel shift his weight from foot to foot uncomfortably. "Did I frighten you?" he asked. She nodded, sitting up in the bed. "A little."

"I'm sorry."

Sam brushed the hair away from her face and peered at him, curious. "What are you doing here, Cas? Aren't you supposed to be protecting Dean?" He flipped one of the lapels of his coat outward to its rightful place, avoiding her gaze. "I'm here because of Dean," he responded. Sam's heart skipped a beat. "Is he okay?" she inquired, straightening and throwing her bare legs over the edge of the mattress. She remembered in the back of her mind that she only wore one of Dean's tee-shirts, with no bottoms. This time, when she spoke, Castiel did look at her. "Define 'okay.'"

"Cas, I swear to God - "

"He hasn't been attacked, if that's what you're asking."

She let out a heavy breath, throwing her hands up in the air. "That's what I was looking for. Next time, lead with that, would you? Save me a heart attack?" Castiel gave her his trademark look, with his head cocked to the side and his eyebrows furrowed. Sam tried to ignore the small surge of affection that flushed her face with heat when she saw it. "So why are you here, if he's alright?" she added. The angel glanced around the room with a nervous sort of fidget. "Dean can be," he sighed, "slightly, um..."

"Incredibly, unbelievably irritating?" she finished for him. Surprisingly, Castiel cracked a smile. "Couldn't have said it better," he chuckled, his low voice rumbling in a way that vibrated satisfyingly in the cavity of Sam's chest. He gestured toward the space near her pillow, seeing as she had moved toward the bottom corner of the bed. "May I?" Sam nodded and patted the comforter beside her. He gingerly sat on the mattress, his shoulders tense and his back straight as he stared at his feet. Sam noted, amused, that he was not wearing shoes, for some odd reason. "I needed a break," he continued. She laughed, "I understand. I suppose taking a break's what I'm doing, too. In a sense."

Castiel glanced at her, his blue eyes unnaturally bright in the dim lighting. She attempted not to notice quite as much, and fought to stifle a warm feeling that was blossoming in her stomach. "Anyway," she said, "welcome to the 'Dean Club.' We meet every week to discuss his insufferableness. Well... usually it's just me, talking to myself about how much he annoys me, but now I've got you!" The angel gave her a genuine smile, and Sam felt one curving her own lips upward. Laughter lines deepened at the corners of his mouth and made the edges of his brilliant blue eyes crinkle in a way that she found exceptionally, unexpectedly endearing. It was not often that she saw ever-serious, monotone-voiced Castiel relaxed, or smiling at all. This was rare, and she was enjoying every second of it.

"Wait," she said as a thought occurred to her. She angled her body to the right, toward him. "How did you even find me? I didn't tell Dean where I'd be going, and you put that angel warding on our ribs..."

Suddenly Castiel looked a bit uneasy. "I followed you." His voice was deadpan, as usual, but Sam noticed the way he dropped his eyes from hers, as if he was ashamed. Her eyebrows pulled together in confusion, she replied, "I just got here, like, an hour ago. You must've been following me for a while." He still did not look at her, but simply fiddled with his tie. He straightened it meticulously. "Dean is protected," he told her, as if this was the appropriate response to her statement. "I made sure of it."

Sam beamed at him, holding back a laugh. "You're one strange little man, you know that?" she quipped. Finally he met her eye once more, uncertainty causing them to shine, but when he saw the happiness that she was sure she was radiating, he visibly calmed. The atmosphere shifted, as well. She gave him a look when she felt it, and tried to work out something in her mind. He held her gaze, though a bit reluctantly. "Something's changed about you. It's a good change," she added, noting the concerned expression that clouded his face, "but a change regardless. I can't put my finger on it."

Castiel breathed slowly, blinking a few times. "I don't believe I've changed. Not even my clothing." He touched the button-up shirt beneath his suit jacket. "This... this is all I have." There was such a seriousness in his tone that Sam could not help but burst into laughter. He stared at her, his surprise very similar to a deer caught in the headlights. Then his features relaxed again, and a gentle, appreciative smile brightened his irises by several shades. Sam shook her head and looked at the floor, grinning.

"Hold still," said the angel without warning, outside of her line of vision. Her smile fading, Sam glanced back up at him. "Why?" she answered with a hint of fear tinging her voice. His eyebrows were furrowed once more, but he did not look like there was a threat nearby. "Just hold still. I want to try something." Sam nodded once. Her muscles tensed up, and she allowed him to leave her periphery vision once more as she scanned the room out of the corner of her eye.

Then, something was blocking her view, and that same something was very solid and pressing its lips to hers.

Sam's eyes widened considerably as she stared at the blurred outline of Castiel's unkemptly-haired head, and she became painfully aware of an intense spark that was passing between them. As if he was a shock of electricity and she a conductor. His lips were awkwardly unmoving, unsure of what to do, yet Sam had never experienced anything like it. She could almost see flames erupting to life around them, heating the room a thousand degrees. Castiel pulled back sooner than she would have liked, and she could do nothing but sit there and stare at him. His eyes were shut, his head leaned downward so she could see the very slight upward curve of the tip of his nose, and the slope of his lips. The instinct to ignore how inviting they looked was long gone.

"What was that?" she whispered hoarsely as she blinked about a hundred times. He shook his head once, though in all essence it was merely a slight tilt of his head to the right. "I don't know," he replied. The hollow feeling in Sam's chest that had been ever-present since her fight with Dean was being gradually filled with an unavoidable substance that felt suspiciously like liquid gold. It was light and airy, like a breeze on a summer afternoon, and yet held such a weighty sensation of pure, inexplicable warmth that it was not a possibility that it could be as intangible as that. The feeling was new, and pleasant, and she wanted to feel it again.

So when Castiel, to her mild shock, leaned in to kiss her once more, she did not move away. There was a brief moment of afterthought in which she pressed her index finger to his cheek, a pitiful way to tell him to stop. But she felt him gently press his hand to her cheek, his fingers slipping over the back of her neck and sending shivers down her spine, and the protesting index migrated to his shirt collar and pulled him closer.

**(author's note: at this point i would _highly_ suggest playing the song this chapter is titled for: "I Was Broken" by Marcus Foster)**

Castiel was beginning to move his lips along with the rhythm of her own, again causing some surprise to flood her veins. Without much thought Sam was dimly aware of herself unbuttoning his shirt. This action was met with no resistance; he even shrugged off his trenchcoat for the first time in she did not know when. It slunk to the floor in a heap, and within a minute Sam noticed that Castiel's suit jacket and pristine white shirt were laying on top of it. The angel was now shirtless, and, she realized with a jolt, so was she. There was nothing between her breasts and his chest besides the oxygen that filled the room. Sam did not remember taking off her own top, but did not have much time to think about it, for her limbs were moving without her brain giving orders. Her shaking fingers undid the zipper on his trousers as fast as lightning. She scooted backward on the bed, toward the headboard, and pulled him on top of her in the process as his pants slithered down to lay with the rest of his clothes. He peppered tiny kisses along the base of her neck, tracing his soft lips along her jawline.

"How do you know how to do that?" she gasped. The angel did not stop. "What?" he murmured against her skin. Sam swallowed hard as his nose brushed the tip of her own. "Well, _that_ , for one. I thought you were a vir - "

"I am." His inquisitive blue eyes crinkled at the sides, this time in thought. "I suppose things just sort of work well, when it's with..." He stopped abruptly, and Sam watched as several emotions passed over his serious face. She wanted to know how the sentence ended, but he bent down and kissed her, and everything else seemed to melt from her mind. The only way she could think to describe the feeling was _heavenly_.

And that brought a spark of fear to her chest.

"Are you sure you should be doing this?" she breathed. "Definitely not," he said, his mouth quirked up in a grin. Another kiss was planted on her lips, and between that and the next, she added, "Cas, I don't want you to get in trouble." The angel's blues met Sam's greens; he sighed. "I'm already _in_ trouble," he said huskily. "It can't get much worse. And this is something that I have, admittedly, thought about for a long time. It's worth any trouble that could result from it."

Sam attempted to protest again, though she desperately did not want him to stop, but the touch of his skin to hers was so overwhelmingly powerful that it rendered her incapable of speaking any more. He was the flame, and she was the gasoline, and it felt impossible that the room had not exploded yet. She trailed her fingertips along his stomach and chest, which were unexpectedly toned and muscly. Because of how his clothes fit, she had expected that he would be skinny, with little muscle mass. Of course, as per usual with the angel, she had misjudged him. In one swift movement, she put her hand on the back of his neck and pulled him down toward her, connecting their mouths. As his lips met her own once more, she was happily surprised by how quickly he seemed to be learning. She closed her eyes, his tongue slipping into her mouth almost as an instinct. The kiss deepened and grew hungrier, more passionate, until Sam could feel his member harden against her inner thigh. Castiel drew back, peering at himself curiously, and she fought the urge to laugh. A smile crept across her face, however, and he noticed, returning one of his own. She found his uncertainty to be exceptionally adorable.

The angel's tip found its way to her entrance, catching Sam entirely off-guard. She let out a breathy gasp, pleasure flooding her senses and filling her with jittery warmth, as he slowly penetrated her. With shaking fingers she grasped the bedsheets tight. Sam had had sex exactly twice in the past; this would be the third. It was still relatively new, and the feeling of lust only intensified as Castiel slid deeper inside her. He was moving agonizingly, _painfully_ unhurriedly. She had to bite her lip to keep from telling him to go faster, because he still had not fully entered her yet. The impressive length and width of his member somewhat shocked Sam, but she could not focus on her astonishment due to the torturous leisurely pace with which he thrust his hips.

At last, she felt him settle entirely down on her legs. The depth to which he reached inside her almost brought a whimper to her lips, but she repressed it by gripping the sheets harder with one hand. Her other snaked up to his hip bone and rested there. Castiel moved himself back out halfway, and then in again, earning small noises of pleasure from Sam. He began gently, but after a minute, the thrusts were more forceful. She moaned softly at first; every pound of his crotch, though, made her voice grow in amplification. His breathing was rapid and ragged, and Sam's was slightly shallow.

Finally, he hit that one _spot_ , and she let out a shriek. The reaction seemed to egg Castiel on, for he plunged himself deeper into her, remaining in the same position. With each thrust, the headboard clanged against the wall, and the springs in the bed squeaked a little, but Sam heard none of it. She felt herself nearing her climax. The angel's legs grew wobbly, and she knew he was almost finished as well. Her fingernails dug into the soft flesh of his hip as she screamed, feeling him burst inside her.

Castiel lunged into her a few more times after her orgasm, then removed himself, leaving Sam feeling somewhat empty. He flopped down beside her in the bed, and their breaths matched in quickness. They simply laid there for a couple of moments, listening to the sound of the other's inhaling. "What I did," he breathed, breaking the silence, "was that... correct?"

When Sam looked at him, his eyes were fixated on the ceiling, and his eyebrows were knitted together in thought. She gave a soft chuckle. "Very," she replied. He turned his head to the side and met her eyes, the uncanny blue of his own sparkling impossibly in the darkness. Suddenly Sam realized that Dean's description of the angel's perpetually messy locks - "You've always got sex hair, man" - was rather accurate.

"Good," said Castiel with a relieved grin. A beat passed between them where they just looked into each other's eyes, and then simultaneously, they both laughed quietly. The deep sound that came from his vocal chords still filled her with a sort of longing, a fondness. Sam moved to lay her head on his shoulder, her hand lightly resting on his chest, and she fell asleep to the steady vibration of his breathing.

She had no way of knowing that when she awoke, he would be gone.


	30. I'll See You In The Future When We're Older

                   Sam lived to regret that night. Every time she was around Dean (because they made up shortly afterward), and she'd see him smile, and she'd get that same fluttery feeling in her chest, she would feel like she betrayed him. And in a sense, she had. Castiel was Dean's friend, as much as the angel annoyed him at times. They cared for each other deeply. He had rescued Dean from Hell, and Sam _slept with him_. It didn't help, either, that Castiel had slipped away while she was sleeping, leaving her alone and overcome with a feeling of dirtiness. She could hardly look at him for the first few weeks.

            Of course, when things started getting worse, she had had no choice but to forgive and forget.

            Lilith had been growing ever closer to breaking the Sixty-Six Seals in Sam's absence from Dean. When they reunited, there was a new sense of urgency to their search. Castiel kept them as informed as he could, but Heaven was rioting, and he had been trying his best to control the angry masses of angels as they screamed out for God to return. Sam continued to trust Ruby, despite Dean's advisories.

            Little did she know that big brothers always know best.

            Lilith grew stronger, gained more followers, and before Bobby and the Winchesters knew it, there was but one Seal left. They had raced and scrambled to discover what it could be, and in the end, they'd had Lilith cornered in an old nunnery. Sam's psychic strength had doubled, possibly even tripled, and with Ruby by her side, she killed the demon, the _first_ demon ever created.

            The Sixty-Sixth Seal was broken - and it was Sam who broke it.

            Ruby knew this. She had known all along; Lilith employed Ruby to lead Sam on, to gain her trust and bring her to a place where she would be able to kill Lilith. That night, Sam listened in horror as Ruby explained the entire plan, giddy with savage triumph. When she'd finished, Sam had held her in place as Dean stabbed her with her own knife, but the damage was already done. Sam had barely uttered Dean's name before a great _crack_ resounded in the room, and the floor began to split. Lucifer's Cage had been opened. The ultimate evil was freed.

            The Winchesters spent their time avoiding Lucifer as best they could, but had known they could not avoid him forever. Sam hated herself for succumbing to such idiocy, for believing a demon's lie; guilt ate her alive every waking moment of her days. Nothing she did could alleviate the crushing knowledge that she had been the catalyst in jumpstarting the biblical apocalypse.

            And, true to the Winchester way, things only managed to get worse from there. A trickster they thought they had killed long ago cropped up once again, but his face was familiar to Castiel. It was revealed that the being was no trickster at all, but an archangel named Gabriel. He was sarcastic and spoiled, and neither of the Winchesters much took to him, for they believed they could not trust him. He had been trapped in holy fire (which was a circle of anointed oil that had been lit aflame) in a warehouse, where they were questioning him, and just before they left, Gabriel shouted something about Sam's infidelity. Naturally she jumped to defend herself, not knowing that Gabriel _knew_ about her and Castiel sleeping together. He had asked if she knew the end of Castiel's unfinished sentence, and if she didn't, did she want to? He could tell her, if she did. Sam could neither speak nor move under the weight of Dean's horrified, hurt gaze. Castiel stared down his brother with a seething hatred, an expression Sam had never seen on him before. Gabriel laughed and withheld the ending, saying that it would be much more sentimental if Castiel told her himself. But he _did_ , however, mentally project it into Dean's mind.

            Sam would never forget the way Dean had looked at her when they returned to the motel that night. She would never forget the pain in his eyes, and the slight break in his voice. She would never forget how he _refused_ to so much as glance at Castiel, who seemed just as troubled. And though she repeatedly insisted that nothing had happened since then, which it hadn't, she knew they would not be the same as they were before.

            Her life had been on a downhill slope. Castiel was never present, always fighting angel battles; Dean, while grudgingly accepting that what had happened _had_ happened, acted strangely around her; Bobby was perpetually stressed about stopping the apocalypse at all costs. So when news came that an archangel called Michael could put everything at a standstill, Sam was thrilled.

            That is, until she was told that he needed a vessel.

            A _human_ vessel.

            "The Righteous Man."

            Dean.

            Lucifer also needed a vessel, and she could only guess who it would be.

            Why was it _always_ the Winchesters?

            Of course, Dean had immediately rejected, and continued to do so, against all threats made toward him from rogue angel Zachariah. He was told over and over again that if he did not "say yes," then Earth's population would cease to exist. Sam had felt the weight of the world on her shoulders; she knew that if she refused, humanity would crumble. If she accepted, humanity would _still_ crumble, and she would either die or spend the rest of eternity locked in Hell's impenetrable Cage.

            Dean was shown a glimpse into the future where he said no to being _the_ vessel. It was everything out of a dystopian novel: demolished cities, broken people in rundown ghettos, and worst of all, a version of himself that he never wanted to meet. A Dean that was cold, cruel, unfeeling, and unworried with risking the lives of his friends. Castiel had become a full human by then, prone to overly sexual tendencies and a joyful death wish. Even still, despite all odds, he followed Dean everywhere, even into the battle that the Dean from the future knew would kill the former angel. Still they marched on. Present-time Dean had watched his future-self get his neck snapped by none other than Sam - or rather, Lucifer in a Sam costume. Lucifer had explained to Dean that Sam was going to say yes, and it was a fact that both of them knew to be true. Dean bravely disregarded everything the devil said to him.

            When he returned from the short sprint into the future, the memory of that dead, inhuman gleam in Sam's beautiful eyes would stay with him forever. He never wanted to see her that way again.

            Soon, however, they were out of options. A "yes" from _someone_ was the only choice. Lucifer's vessel was becoming weaker and weaker, and would soon be burned to ash, and the devil himself was growing antsy. Angry. A remarkably bleak future was foreseen by a prophet named Chuck, who somehow seamlessly detailed every single aspect of their lives since Dean found Sam at Stanford in a series of paperback fiction novels. But, regardless, the Winchesters were not without a plan. They tracked down the so-called "King of the Crossroads," a Scottish demon named Crowley. He willingly handed over the fabled Colt - the gun that killed Azazel, the gun their father spent most of his life searching for, and the gun that had been stolen from them by conwoman Bela Talbot - with a request: for Sam and Dean to finish off Lucifer once and for all. Crowley believed that once Lucifer rid himself of humankind, the demons were next. He also helped to point them in the right direction to opening the Cage back up. The Four Horsemen of the biblical apocalypse - Pestilence, Famine, War, and Death - were out and prepped to obliterate everything they touched. Sam and Dean managed to find the first three and cut off their rings, which controlled their destructive powers. Dean found Death and retrieved his ring as well. Shockingly, Death was the one who proved to be the most amicable by agreeing to the plan and giving Dean explicit instructions for how to use the rings to open Lucifer's Cage. Death wanted Lucifer to stay in his place as much as the rest of them did.

            Once everything was in order, Sam came up with the plan to accept Lucifer so that Dean, Bobby and Castiel could open up Hell's inescapable Cage. Sam knew that this may result either in death or the rest of eternity spent trapped with Lucifer and Michael in Hell, but she felt responsible for cleaning up a mess she created. And she was not afraid. At least, that's what she would tell Dean, and if she said it enough times, she would sort of believe it herself, too.

            On the day they were to carry out the plan, she had been standing against one of the old cars in Bobby's junkyard when Castiel approached her timidly. They spoke idly for a moment before she said, "You know... I never did learn the end of that sentence."

            He had tilted his head, giving her his signature look. It warmed her heart. "What sentence?"

            "Y'know... _the_ sentence."

            The angel thought for a few seconds, and then seemed to understand. Sam could have sworn that his cheeks flushed a little red. "Yes... That one. W-would you like to-to hear it?"

            Sam had nodded, without smiling as she normally would. Something in his eyes had tipped her off that the ending was not an easy thing for him. The way the impossibly bright blue of his irises dimmed slightly made her feel a deep hollowness in her chest, and she had known that whatever words finished the statement, he still believed it.

            Castiel closed the distance between them almost unnoticeably. Sam had not even registered that he'd gotten closer until she felt the faint stubble of his jawline brush against her cheek, and heard his deep, sultry voice whisper, "It was, 'I suppose things just sort of work well, when it's with someone you are in love with.'"

            Sam's heart had dropped into her stomach and sprung back up into her head, and she turned her face to look at him just in time for their noses to touch ever so slightly. No more words were exchanged, for there was nothing left to be said. Piercing blue gazed into cavernous greenish-teal and his ridiculously long eyelashes fluttered down and batted his cheekbones and Sam realized that on some level, she loved him too.

            Neither of them saw Dean watching from afar.

            Just before she left, Castiel had grabbed her hand and reminded her to remember that "the sentence would never change." Sam took his words and locked them up in her heart, so as not to dissolve into tears, because she had to be strong.

            As they walked together, she had grabbed Dean's hand and laced their fingers together. Everything that had built itself into a wall that barricaded them from one another was simultaneously barraged to the ground, and they were whole in each other again, and in the silence Sam thought about moments when they were kids. That time when Dean nearly lit an entire field on fire to show her fireworks on the Fourth of July. Those times when he would sneak out of the house when John was asleep so that he could buy her what she needed, be it food or anything. That time when he got suspended from his third middle school because he knocked a boy unconscious, because the boy had led her on and broken her heart. All the times when Dean had been there and no one else had, times that only reminded her that when the world turned on her, she could run back to Dean and he would catch her with open arms.

            Ironically, it was on the short stroll to her death that Sam realized she had been painfully, inexorably, _marvelously_ in love with Dean Winchester her entire life.

            Sam lost the internal battle to Lucifer. Her plan was to fight him off just long enough to jump into the Pit herself, but she did not last more than a second. The angel outcast was simply too strong. Dean, Bobby and Castiel found Lucifer (in Sam's body) in a field, preparing for the apocalyptic fight with Michael. When they arrived, Dean immediately recognized Michael's vessel: it was Adam. John Winchester's long-lost son, the son he never mentioned, Dean's half-brother. There was a brief explanation, which Dean didn't really listen to because he was so focused on the Sam that wasn't Sam, and then he heard a familiar voice shout out, "Hey, ass-butt!" Dean turned to see Castiel throw a grenade of holy fire at Michael, who subsequently burned up on contact and temporarily vanished.

            This made for a very unhappy Lucifer. The ex-angel who wore Sam's skin snapped her fingers and exploded Castiel, then killed Bobby. All that was left was her and Dean. Lucifer had attempted to sway Dean, but he would not budge, and Lucifer broke. The Sam that was not Sam began punching violently, beating Dean to the point of death. His face bruised over, his nose bled, cuts opened on his skin, teeth were dislodged, his eyes nearly swelled shut, but still he did not run. Actually, he spoke with a kindness that he had never had before. "Sammy, it's okay. It's okay, Sammy. I'm here. I'm here, Sammy. I'm not going to leave you. It's okay, I'm here. I won't leave you, Sammy."

            One more blow would have surely killed him. As Lucifer reared back Sam's fist to deliver this final hit, the hand froze. Sam's lovely, near-hazel eyes had clouded over, staring at Dean's bloodied form, and even though he was just barely conscious, he saw a shift behind them. He saw life flood into the beautiful irises, and suddenly, Sam's _true_ voice filled his ears, trembling with repressed horror. "Don't worry, Dean. I've got him," she had whispered. Dean knew what she meant. "I've got him." She had straightened and moved away from him, glaring at her own trembling fingers as if they had insulted her. Dean could do no more than gaze at her, destitute and weary, as she strode over to where the rings of the Horsemen lay in the grass. She instructed Dean on what to do, and with teary eyes, she breathed an apology as soft as the wind.

            Whatever Dean had been feeling at that moment instantly evaporated, leaving nothing but heartache in its wake, because he was watching the woman he loved more than anything else sacrifice herself for him - _again_.

            Michael had reappeared just in time to be grabbed by Sam as she tumbled into Lucifer's cage. The gate closed a half a second later, and everything was unbearably silent.

            Dean had ached all over. Every part of him hurt, even parts that he thought _couldn't_ hurt. He sat completely still for a moment, then felt a hand on his shoulder. Castiel, unscathed and whole, stood behind him, wearing the saddest expression Dean had ever seen on the angel. He had touched two fingers to Dean's forehead, and suddenly, nothing hurt anymore. Nothing he could heal, anyway.

            There had been a new hole in his heart, now. It was a rather unique one, and many people don't have to suffer through the pain of receiving it. It's the one that is the result of watching someone you love leave, and you know there's nothing you can do to stop them. This kind of hole burns and scorches and ices over just to melt unexpectedly one day, when you think you're getting better.

            The hole kept Dean from feeling very emotionally attached to Lisa when he went to her house after losing Sam. After all, he was only there because it was practically Sam's dying wish that Dean go find the woman. That he have a normal life with a normal girl and a normal kid.

            But Dean never wanted normal. He wanted Sam.

            A year passed with Dean playing the role of a suburban dad. Or, rather, _attempting_ to play the role. He gave up hunting, sure, and got a real job and new "friends," but everywhere he turned, he saw a threat to Lisa and young Ben. He kept shotguns in the house - yes, more than one - and although the Impala was covered by a tarp and sitting unused in the garage, Dean made sure that the weapons were never moved or touched. Just in case.

            When he started seeing the demon Azazel, he knew something was off. Then, as if he were poisoned, he collapsed, and when he awoke, he found himself lying on a cold, dirty wood floor. In a shack he hand never seen.

            But sitting in a chair across the room was Sam.

            This was where things got even messier than before.


	31. Far Longer Than Forever

Sam and Dean had been arguing a lot lately. It was a while after Sam's soul was returned to her, and her visions of Lucifer had not begun to be in abundance yet. _Yet._ They would, very soon, but as of now, she and Dean were at each other's throats every second of the day. And the best part of it was that neither of them quite knew why.

On one day, both of their most heated arguments had been interrupted by Castiel. Secretly, Sam had been thankful. She hated fighting with Dean, and she didn't know the reason for all their bickering. At the close of that day, after solving a case and killing the beast, they returned to their motel room. Dean instantly grabbed some spare change and shrugged his jacket back on.

"Where're you headed?" she asked him innocently, trying not to sound accusing. He didn't look at her. "Out for a bit," he responded. There was a tight curtness to his tone that she instantly disliked. Sam scoffed as she leaned back against her headboard; he heard it and glanced her way. "Is that a problem?" he sarcastically added.

"No, no. Fine by me. Go ahead. Go drink the night away - again."

"Who said I was going to a bar?"

"Where the hell else do you go when you 'go out,' Dean?" she shot back angrily. "That's all you ever do after we get done with a case. You drink a lot, hit on women, and have one-night-stands. It's like a sport with you."

Dean's cheeks flooded with color. "I don't do that," he defended. Sam rolled her eyes, and he continued loudly, "And even if that were true, why would you even care what I do? It's not like it affects you in any way!"

"I don't care."

"Sure you don't."

"Don't flatter yourself, you ass. I told you, go do whatever the hell you want to do. Just don't make a lot of noise when you come stumbling back in here at four o'clock in the morning."

Dean planted his feet more firmly into the ground. Sam saw that he was not going anywhere at the moment, so she heaved herself off the bed. "You know what, I'm leaving. I need air." She started toward the door, but he caught her by the arm. It was not a threatening grip, nor was it done very strongly. His eyes flashed in the way that only Dean's did: full of anger and fear at the same time. "You don't get to leave just because you're mad at me," he said. She rolled her eyes and wrenched herself free. "Like I said. Don't flatter yourself. Not everything is about you."

"This whole argument started because you're mad that I was going to get a drink!"

"No, Dean, the argument started because you weren't planning on telling me you were going to get a drink - which really means around fifteen drinks, to you. It started because I'm _annoyed_ that drinking and sleeping with strangers is all you ever do, and that it doesn't even seem wrong to you!"

"God, you're so friggin' stupid..." he muttered under his breath. Sam's face heated up, and she sighed furiously and whipped around. "It's not all I ever do!" Dean shouted behind her. She did not respond, just worked at tying her shoelaces as she leaned against the doorframe. The sound of a leather jacket smacking the floor resounded, but still yet she did not face him. He huffed around for a moment, and Sam's shoelaces seemed like the world's most impossibly-tangled knot. An angry puff of air broke the silence. Immediately after hearing it, the knot in her laces became magically undone, and she slipped her shoe on and yanked on the doorknob.

"Why do you think I tell you about all these women? I thought it would make you jealous!"

"And why the hell would you do that?" she screamed, staring at the street outside.

_"Because I love you, damn it!"_

Sam's grip on the door slackened; her breath became solid in her lungs. The heart that beat so steadily in her chest was now pounding against her ribcage and her throat somehow simultaneously. The words repeated themselves in a loop in her head in a beautiful symphony that she knew she'd never get tired of hearing. Very slowly she shut the door again, and looked around at Dean, who seemed just as shocked at the statement as she felt.

"What?" she breathed. He did not meet her gaze. "Nothing," he mumbled. Sam strode toward him, closing the distance between them in a few strides. "No," she said firmly as she moved, "you aren't doing that. Not this time. You look me in the eye... and tell me what you said."

Dean's enchanting greens fell on hers, and the anger she felt just a moment ago drained out of her. And instead of leaving her cold and hollow on the inside, she felt quite warm. A minute passed, and Dean still did not say anything, just stared at her. Sam groaned aloud, "You are the most ridiculous, assiest _jerk_ I've ever met!"

"Bitch," tumbled from his lips before he seemed to be able to stop it; a playful twinkle appeared in his eye as the word formed in the air. So many emotions filled the cavity of Sam's chest that she could not even think clearly. Everything was his name and his eyes and the sound of his voice. She heard herself retaliate, "Jerk." Dean only grinned. "Bitch."

"Jerk, you - "

That was as far as she got, because Dean promptly pressed his lips to hers.

Everything in the room faded away. Her eyes were frozen open in shock for a moment, but she saw Dean's face close-up, every freckle on his cheeks and the gentle upward curve of his eyelashes and the nearly blemish-free surface of his skin and she _felt him_ , and she allowed her eyelids to slide down over her eyes. Darkness enveloped her but she was not afraid. She hardly even noticed. All she could think about was the fact that their mouths were connected and his hands were cupping both her cheeks and his fingers were tangled in her hair. Every touch of his skin was electric, and alit each nerve in her body with a fire she knew had flamed up when they first kissed when she was seventeen. It had never died, only simmered. This kiss was so different, though. It was more confident, full of certainty; there was no hesitation on either of their parts. The softness of his lips was half surprising, and the way her own moved in sync with his made it seem like they were two pieces of a machine that were finally fitted together properly, and now the entire thing worked in a way that it hadn't before.

When he pulled back, they were both breathing a little heavily, but Sam didn't mind. Actually, she wished she didn't have to breathe at all so that they could keep kissing like that forever.

"Man," he murmured lowly, his breath fanning out across her face, "that's been a long time comin'." Sam smiled.

Suddenly, the soft flutter of wings seemed to tear them both back into reality, and they jumped apart as if they had burned one another. Sam turned her head to see Castiel standing there, peering between the two of them curiously. He had walked in on them arguing twice already today, and just like those other times, he asked the same innocent question. "Am I interrupting something?"

The first time they had argued, Sam had answered with an angry, "Yes," while Dean replied offhandedly, "No." The second instance, the responses were reversed. This time, both Winchesters told the angel, "Yes." Castiel's eyebrows arched in surprise, making his already large blue eyes even wider, but he said nothing. With one more faint rustling of wings, he was gone.

Sam felt laughter bubbling up inside her, and it spilled out before she could withhold it. Dean looked at her, taken aback. She could tell he was trying to look stoic, but his mask gave way to amusement and he allowed his lips to quirk up on one side. "What's so funny?" he asked.

"Oh, I don't know," Sam chuckled. "Just... this. The whole situation. The fact that you used a kiss to win an argument."

"Not true. I used it to shut you up. If I won the argument, that's just a plus." It was not said in a mean way. Quite the contrary, the look in his eye was remarkably tender. Sam almost felt naked underneath the gaze. She blushed and walked over to a counter in the kitchenette, seating herself on top of it. The tension had vanished, leaving an awkward conversation in its wake.

She looked at him through her eyelashes as he walked toward her. "What just happened, Dean?" she asked quietly. He sighed and placed both hands on either side of her, resting flat on the countertop. She felt the sides of his thumbs brush her outer thighs and repressed a shiver of pleasure.

"What just happened is something that I've been thinking about since that night I found you again," he replied matter-of-factly. "Well, no, that's not really true. I've been thinking about it since I was old enough to know what kissing is, but that's kinda creepy to say out loud."

Sam furrowed her eyebrows, a tiny smile on her lips. "How?"

"I don't know. It's like admitting to being a stalker. 'Yeah, I've had a crush on you since I was nine and you were four.' _That's_ not weird at all." He shook his head, a soft chuckle escaping him. "Anyway, my reasoning stands. I told you all about all these women that I supposedly slept with, but d'ya wanna know the truth? I've only slept with three. _Three_ , Sam. Not the hundred or however many you're thinking. And it was only once for each of them, I swear. I can even name them for you. Cassie - you know, that chick from Athens, Ohio who was haunted by the killer monster truck - , Lisa, and Anna, the angel. That's it. I just wanted you to believe there were more to... I don't know... spark _something_ in you. Something like what I feel for you."

He paused for a moment, apparently to let her digest what he'd said. And she was slowly taking it in, with something like exhilaration seeping into her veins. Only three women, as opposed to the _innumerable_ amount that she'd always thought? She was almost beaming with happiness, but all that she could muster was steady breaths and silence. Thirty seconds passed, and then he leaned forward and tilted Sam's chin upward so that she had to look him in the eye as he spoke. There was an intensity in his green irises that she was unused to seeing, and it filled her with some sort of inexplicable electricity. When he continued, his voice was low and pleading.

"Sammy... I am in love with you. I have been for a really, _really_ long time. And considering all the times that I tried _so damn hard_ not to be, I'm thinking that I'll be in love with you for the rest of my life. And if you aren't okay with that, or if you don't feel that way too, tell me and I'll stop talking, but I - "

Sam cut him off by gently touching her lips to his own. It was very brief, the kiss light as air, but it was enough. She pulled back and he leaned forward, almost in the way an intoxicated man might. A smile broke out over her face. "If you're not sure by now how I feel about you," she said with a small laugh, "then I'm a bit worried about your sanity."

"No, you can't do that," he replied. "You have to say it too. You made me do it. Now it's your turn."

"I don't _have_ to do anything."

"That's not fair!"

"Life's not fair, babe."

She blushed when she realized she used the last word, but Dean seemed to glow. Every part of him swelled, from the joy in his eyes to the breath he sucked in. Without another word he pressed a kiss to her lips, and she felt the smile on his mouth. She laid her thin hands on top of his own and he moved her legs apart so he could lean against the counter, as close to her as he could get. They came up for air a few seconds later, and breathlessly Sam said, "I love you."

Dean grinned. "I know."

They were not sure, when they finally quit making out so that they could call Castiel again, how long they stayed in that position, but it was a long time.


	32. People Have Told Me I Don't Look The Same

                   The bunker was quiet, and it worried Sam a bit. Usually _something_ was happening. But no, there was nothing tonight. Dean was in the kitchen, cooking what smelled like chicken, from where Sam sat at the study table in the other room. She had never known what an exceptional chef he was. And Kevin was busy deciphering the demon tablet, hunched over and surely annoyed in his room. The young boy hardly ever came out, save for the occasional trek for a cup of coffee. Sam wished that she knew what to say to console him after the loss of his mother - though whether or not Crowley (who was now the King of Hell, with Lucifer gone) had been truthful was still in question - , but she simply settled herself with a kind smile his way whenever she saw him. It was all she could do.

            So much had happened within the span of a couple years' time. Not long after she and Dean got together, a new threat was found to the world. A demon named Eve had been breeding new monsters by mixing the races of them to create super-beings, some of which were virtually unkillable. Castiel had been less and less helpful with the Winchesters' trials, because with God apparently out of the picture, Castiel had assumed the role of leader of Heaven. He had a hard time controlling and massing the angels, so he did not always come when Sam and Dean called, which typically annoyed Dean. With Bobby's help, however, the Winchesters discovered a way to destroy the seemingly indestructible Eve, but it required them going back to Western times. This was one thing they needed Castiel for. When he appeared, after some time, he sent Dean back to the Wild West to retrieve the ashes of a phoenix from Samuel Colt - the maker of the ultimate weapon, _the_ Colt. Dean managed to get them, and when he returned to his time, Sam, Dean and Castiel went to speak with a vampire named Lenore, who had had a run-in with the Winchesters before. She informs them that Eve, known by supernatural beings as _the Mother_ , was forcing monsters to give in to their basic natures: killing, feeding, hunting. Lenore begged the three to kill her so she would not succumb to these instincts, to which Castiel, atypical to his normally compassionate self, readily obliged.

            In the time that Dean thought Sam was trapped in Hell with Lucifer and Michael, Castiel had been desperately trying to rally the angels for an army to fight the evils Hell was spouting out. He endeavored to be their new leader by explaining the danger of the concept of freedom to them. "Freedom is a length of rope," he'd told them, "and God wants you to hang yourself with it." The angel Raphael, who had had a hand in continuing the Apocalypse, was less than enthused with the thought of a new God, and he demanded that Castiel support the other angels in discovering their own free will. He announced his intent to restart the Apocalypse, and Castiel refused, fleeing Heaven. He almost went to Dean for help, but decided against it upon seeing the relatively normal life Dean had managed to maintain with Lisa and Ben. Dean was still unaware that Sam was not trapped in Hell anymore. Crowley appeared while Castiel was grappling with himself, and, playing with Castiel's new sense of pride, struck up a deal with him. Crowley would offer up his help, along with fifty thousand souls for Castiel's army; in return, Castiel was to give Crowley half the souls that were trapped in Purgatory, which the angel now had control over. Out of pure desperation, Castiel agreed. Crowley knew that Sam was not in Lucifer's Cage, though how, Castiel never knew. He insisted that keeping the Winchesters alive was very dangerous, but Castiel heatedly refused to kill them, still considering himself as their guardian angel.

            However, he soon took to spying on the Winchesters and Bobby after Sam's return to them, and later accidentally betrayed this fact by referencing part of a conversation he'd overheard. Dean recognized it at once, and they trapped him in holy fire to question him. He'd seemed offended, but more scared than Sam ever remembered seeing him. In an effort to lessen their anger at his betrayal, Castiel had blurted to Sam passionately, "Sam, _I_ was the one who raised you from perdition!" And this new information froze Sam solid. None of them had even the slightest inkling that Castiel could have been so powerful as to open the Cage without freeing Lucifer and Michael. But something far worse came to Sam's mind, and she verbalized it. "Wait a minute. Cas, did you... did you bring me back, without my soul, on _purpose_?" This time, it was Castiel's turn to freeze. His eyes shone with guilt, and it broke Sam's heart. She did not hear anything else he said, not even his apologies or the beginning of another unfinished "I love you, Sam." The disbelief and pain was too loud for her to focus on the rest of the world.

            Soon after this discovery, Lisa and Ben were kidnapped by Crowley. Dean searched relentlessly for them, and Sam knew that it was because he would have felt sole responsibility for them if they had been hurt. One evening, when Dean was about to be killed by a demon he was interrogating, Castiel appeared, stepped in and saved him. Dean was still extremely hurt by Castiel's betrayal, and reacted to his help with hostility. Castiel told Dean that he too considered them to be family, referencing something Dean had said long ago. He told Dean that after all he had done for the Winchesters, Dean should trust him. Even when Dean said he couldn't trust him, Castiel vowed that he would find Lisa and Ben. They parted on a tense note, with Dean telling Castiel that he didn't want his help. Later, after a fight for the girl and her son, Castiel visited Lisa's hospital room, and healed Lisa without any prompting from the worn-out Dean. Though grateful, Dean stated that this did not change the situation, a statement that Castiel regretfully agreed with. Dean asked for one more favor, however, which Castiel granted. Dean left the hospital with a heavy yet relieved heart after the angel erased Ben and Lisa's memories of him.

            The next time Castiel appeared, he did something that, to Dean, was the closest he could get to unforgivable. He showed up indifferent to Dean's anger, saying that he did not care what Dean thought. Castiel explained that if Dean stopped fighting him, Sam would be alright in the end. This frightened Dean, who had been noticing Sam's violent headaches, signifying the wall between her soulless memories and her wakefulness was crumbling. At the end of the conversation, in an attempt to apparently distract Dean, Castiel waved his hand, and the wall came crashing down, enveloping Sam in a fit of unequivocal pain. Dean did not know that all of this was Crowley's doing. When they saw Castiel next, he was different. Bobby, Sam and Dean found him in a room, with sigils painted in blood all around. He opted to tell them that he was opening Purgatory to get to the souls within. They fought with Crowley's protective measures, trying to stop Castiel, but it was too late. The angel absorbed all of the souls into himself. Upon doing this, he promptly turned to Dean and told him that they were no longer family, that they never _were_ family, and that he had no family. Castiel said that he was the new, better God now, and demanded that they proclaim their love and loyalty to him, or they would be destroyed.

            Castiel did much damage as this new God. He killed innocent humans, as well as singlehandedly conducting a mass murdering of angels in Heaven. Dean had given up hope on fighting him, until the idea to bind Death arose. Before Death could kill Castiel as Dean instructed, however, he was freed, and therefore refused to do anything. Soon thereafter, Castiel came to Dean with a plea for help. The souls that were inside of him were too much for his vessel to contain. He begged Dean for his assistance in ridding himself of the souls; Dean obliged. Together, with Sam caring for the hurt angel as he laid on the floor, they reopened Purgatory. Castiel, as disoriented and contused as he was, never let his eyes stray from Sam as she managed to keep him conscious. He caught her hand as it grazed his cheek affectionately, and though he did not speak a word, Sam knew what he was trying to say. She kissed his forehead as she ran into the other room to get supplies. Castiel apologized to Dean, as Dean helped him to his feet, for everything he had done, then released the souls back into Purgatory and collapsed. All was well, for a very brief moment. Then Castiel doubled over, shouting about something called _Leviathan._ His stomach visibly churned and bubbled, and he stumbled outside as black goo oozed from his pores. He then staggered into a nearby lake, which was used for water purification and distribution, and exploded. Dean kept his trenchcoat for months afterward, in the hopes that Castiel would return.

            Shockingly, Dean did find him, but he was not himself. He was deluded into believing he was a prophet named Emmanuel, who was sent from God to perform miracles on the sick and wounded. He was even married to a human woman. Dean had showed up to the home of this Emmanuel in the desperate attempt of finding someone who could heal Sam; she was currently held in a mental hospital, because she could not separate her visions of Lucifer from real life. The man called Emmanuel, who was so obviously the amnesiac Castiel, agreed to go to the hospital to heal Sam. On the car ride there, in response to Emmanuel's innocent inquiries about Sam, Dean spoke of a "friend" who betrayed them. The demon Meg popped in the car at that moment, in her new body, and Dean discreetly made her aware of the fact that he did not want Emmanuel to know that he was really Castiel. Dean feared he would not heal Sam if he knew the truth.

            Many demons were poised and ready when they arrive at the hospital. Meg irritably suggested that they use Castiel's smiting power to defeat them, and the former angel overheard them and asked what they meant. This forced the truth to come out, and Meg revealed who he actually was. As Castiel smote the demons, he began to remember. Trying to get Castiel to save Sam, Dean attempted to defend the angel's inexcusable actions, but Castiel rightfully shot him down and demanded to know why he had lived at all. Inside, after rescuing Sam from a demon, Castiel came to the conclusion that he could not heal her. However, in order to redeem himself to the Winchesters, Castiel wordlessly took on Sam's memories of Hell, alleviating her from them entirely. The Winchesters were forced to leave Castiel in the mental ward, with Meg as his nurse, as he could not be helped with all the madness within him. He was different, now. Not curt, nor brave, nor _Castiel_. He simply "didn't like conflict," and watched bees all day long. It drove Dean mad every time he saw him, mostly because he still did not forgive him for what he'd done to Sam.

            The Leviathan had been slowly taking over the planet, with their leader disguised as powerful and influential business mogul Dick Roman. With the young prophet Kevin Tran on their side, Sam and Dean used the boy's knowledge and anointing to decipher one of the newly found tablets of the Word of God. This one was on Leviathan. Running out of options as Kevin's decrypting of the ancient tablet was slow, Meg brought Castiel back into the fight. Though, he did not do much fighting at all. Dean angrily pointed out that they were cleaning up Castiel's mess, and he was wrong for not helping them.

            During an infiltration mission at Dick Roman's headquarters, Bobby was shot in the head by a Leviathan. The Winchesters rushed him to the hospital, and all the doctors explained that he was most likely not to live through it. Sam and Dean tearfully clung to each other, with nowhere else to turn, and Bobby fought the reaper that came for him. Without them knowing, the man went through all his memories of the Winchesters, from teaching Dean to throw a ball to sitting and watching television with them. At the end of a long night, he awoke, causing Sam and Dean to run in and stand by his bedside, clutching his hands. He frantically wrote a few letters and numbers on a scrap of paper, which he pressed into Sam's shaking hand. The last word he said to them was, "Idjits." And then he was gone.

            It was Bobby's death and Sam and Dean's heartbroken goodbyes that changed Castiel's mind about fighting alongside them. He told Dean that he was bad luck and would probably get them killed, to which Dean had replied that he would rather have Castiel on his side than not have him at all. Castiel realized that it sounded as if Dean was forgiving him, and readily agreed to help with the mission to kill Dick Roman. They discovered how to kill Leviathan when Kevin finished deciphering the tablet, and scurried to gather the materials. They were "a bone of a righteous mortal, as light and good as the Leviathan are hungry and dark, washed in the three bloods of the fallen: a fallen angel, the ruler of fallen humanity, and the father of fallen beasts." Castiel provided a vial of his blood, with a phrase that would haunt and forever resonate in Sam's heart. "Always happy to bleed for the Winchesters." They ventured to the Leviathan headquarters and, after much bloody altercation that also resulted in Meg's death, succeeded in stabbing Dick Roman with the special weapon. However, they did not foresee the catastrophic nature of his demise, so when he detonated with the force of an atomic bomb, Castiel and Dean were caught unawares. The two were sent into Purgatory.

            Sam was devastated, as when she returned to the room where Castiel and Dean were fighting Dick, all she found was blood. She did not see them anywhere. After screaming out for him for who knows how long, she had fled the scene and driven as far and fast as she could go. Eventually she ended up sleeping in the Impala on the side of the interstate, too exhausted and horribly depressed to move another inch. Over the course of time, she attempted to integrate back into life, because she did not know where Dean was or even where to begin looking for him. She thought about him every second of every day, feeling like she was betraying him by trying to live. Despite this, she managed to set up a new life working at and living in a small hotel. A man who also stayed there caught her attention, not romantically, at first. To Sam, he started off being horrid. Gradually, however, it was clear that he was falling for her, and Sam did not know what to do. She still loved Dean and would _always_ love Dean, but did that mean she should wait for him forever to return? She did not even know if he _could_ return from wherever he was. So she allowed herself to date this man for a while, and found herself growing attached to him, though not in the way that he was to her. They lived together for a bit, but Sam could never make herself feel anything but friendship toward him. She did love this man, but definitely not as she loved Dean, or to that extent.

            When Dean _did_ come back, things exploded.

            He was very upset that Sam had not looked for him while he was "dead." She tried to explain that she did not know _how_ to look, but he just did not hear it. Things were difficult between them, which somewhat overshadowed her tremendous joy that he was alive. All she wanted to do was hug him and never let him go again, but his anger proved this to be out of the question. Also, he was more distant than before, and Sam thought she knew why. Castiel had not been able to come back with Dean from Purgatory; it was in his nature to feel responsible for it. She never brought it up after learning that Castiel had "let go," but she knew it plagued him.

            A while after Dean's reappearance, Castiel emerged without any idea of how he was able to do so. Dean questioned and questioned him, but the angel simply did not know. Sam had just been happy that they were both alive and well - at least, well enough. Castiel told them, one day, that he feared returning to Heaven because he thought he might kill himself when he saw the destruction he had caused. This worried Sam deeply. Eventually, however, after explaining to Dean why he chose to stay in Purgatory, he was pulled back into the clouds. Each time they saw him after that, he was different. He even had stopped answering their prayers altogether, after a while. Neither Winchester was aware of the torture Castiel was being subjected to every moment in Heaven.

            An archangel named Naomi had plucked Castiel from Purgatory, stating plainly that, although he stayed behind of his own volition to atone for his sins, that he had work to do to repair the damage he had done. She began brainwashing him and training him to be violent and robotic. He became so indoctrinated to Naomi's implacable control that he showed no emotion anymore. Just the apathy of the other angels. She went as far as to force him to kill and destroy five thousand copies of Dean to desensitize him and prove his loyalty to Heaven. Naomi, pleased with Castiel's ruthlessness, then allowed him to answer a prayer and return to Earth to meet up with Sam and Dean, who had just uncovered the Word of God tablet that was about angels. Castiel told Dean, when he arrived, that he had heard the man's prayer, though Naomi never actually let him hear it. He explained unexpectedly to Dean that Sam was damaged down to a subatomic level, something that even he could not fix. Dean, caught off-guard by this sudden development, let his guard down, and Naomi had telepathically ordered Castiel to kill him. Castiel inwardly fought against it, but his rebellion was for naught, as she had total control over his free will. He attacked Dean viciously, beating him nearly to the point of death. As Dean had knelt to the ground, covering his face as Castiel raised an angel blade at him, he reminded Castiel that no matter what he said, they were indeed family. He confessed that he needed the angel. It was this that had finally broken through to Castiel's heart, and he dropped the blade, temporarily free from Naomi's mastery. The angel quickly healed Dean, apologizing and trying to explain, then grabbed the angel tablet. He said that he needed to protect it from everyone, including the Winchesters. At that, he disappeared, leaving Dean confused and terrified for Sam.

            Kevin, with his intellect and the aid of the vast library that the Men of Letters bunker held, had managed to decode the demon tablet in the weeks prior to Castiel's return. It uncovered a way to close the gates of Hell forever, and they all jumped at the chance to complete the trials necessary. These trials involved exceptionally painful tasks, and Dean had originally planned to undertake them himself, but in the end, it was Sam who completed the first: killing a hellhound. He was distraught and afraid for her, quite obviously, but she stilled him a bit with her calmness and certainty. From then on, though, he had kept a very close eye on her, watching for any signs of pain whatsoever. After a while, Castiel finally found his way back to the bunker in which the Winchesters were staying, thanks to Dean de-angel-proofing the place, and he was in bad shape. Dean's reaction to Castiel's appearance had not been a happy one; quite the contrary, he was infuriated with the angel because of what had happened at their last interaction. He fumed at Castiel because Castiel abandoned him and Sam again and he so mistrusted Dean that he fled with the tablet, which they desperately needed. Sam could see, as she had stood watching from afar, that Castiel was clearly hurt by Dean's anger, but Dean seemed to think that he deserved to feel guilty for his constant disappearances. Then Dean had stormed out, insisting that Castiel stay there at the bunker to heal. Sam's heart warmed as he tugged her along with him, because she knew that he would not have suggested that if he was not trying his hardest to work through his fury. Later on, Castiel had gone out to buy some things that he thought would please Dean when an angel named Metatron approached him. This angel had been the official Scribe of God and had written the tablets himself. Sam, Dean and Castiel had visited him a while ago, when they first discovered the tablets, but the angel's vessel had been a pudgy, antisocial man. Metatron lived surrounded by books and novels to keep him company; he thrived off of stories. So for Castiel to see him out and about was a shock. After a little discussion, the two teamed up to close the gates to Heaven as well. Castiel was responsible for his own set of trials, one of which was killing an innocent Nephilim girl, the spawn of an angel and a human.

            Metatron had soon been captured by Naomi as he and Castiel neared the third and final task of the Heaven trials. Castiel went to Dean for help, but Dean refused to leave Sam, as they were nearly ready to start the third trial to shut down Hell. Sam had to purify her blood by confessing to her sins, and then inject that blood into a demon to cure him back into a mortal. The demon they had gotten had been Crowley. It seemed daunting, but she had believed that the trials were somewhat helping her to pay penance for her own sins. And besides, there was nothing the Winchesters wanted more than Crowley to no longer be a demon. Sam heard Dean talking as she unpacked the Impala, and walked around to see Castiel flustered and irritably pleading with him. "You should go," she had said, and Dean had spun on his heel to stare at her. "Seriously," she added.  "What, and leave you here with the King of Hell?" he'd replied sarcastically. "Come on."

            "I got this," Sam had told him surely. "And if you guys can lock up the angels, too... That's a good day." A soft chuckle had escaped her, then, and Dean's eyes followed her every movement. He seemed to be inwardly struggling with the decision. Sam had had to force herself to keep her face straight, because even though she wanted him there with her, holding her hand and keeping her strong, she knew that Castiel and his mission was more important than her need for his company. She could feel the angel's gaze on her, worried and impatient at the same time. She missed the compassionate softness that his irises had had before. After a moment, Dean had said, "Look, I... I'm down with sending the angels back to Heaven. Just 'cuz they're dicks. But the demons?" He paused, jabbing his thumb into his chest. "That's on us." Sam had nodded both her agreement and understanding, and he gave her a long look. "Start the injections," he sighed finally. "If I'm not back in eight hours, finish it. No questions, no hesitation."

            Sam smiled softly and nodded. "Yeah." A beat of silence had passed between them, then, and he looked as if he were seeing her in a whole new light. She got that look often, from him, but for some reason, this was different. It was much more loaded than the other times. Without another word, he'd taken a single, giant stride forward, cupped her cheek and pressed his mouth to hers. Things had been so tense with the trials that they had hardly had time together that was not spent filled with worry or argument. The kiss lasted a good ten seconds, more heartfelt than passionate, and when he pulled away, he pecked her lips once more, like he had not gotten enough the first time. "Sammy," he breathed, and goosebumps had risen on her skin, "I..."

            "I know," she'd whispered back, touching his hand gently. "I love you too." He met her eyes, a smile in his beautiful greens signifying that she had guessed what he was going to say correctly. She had given him a quiet, encouraging smile in return, and he stepped away, pulling some items from the trunk of the Impala. Castiel raised his hand to touch Dean's shoulder, but paused slightly, gazing at Sam. When she had met his eye, she had heard his voice loud and clear in her mind. _I love you. And I'm sorry, Sam._ Then he placed his hand on Dean, and they were gone.

            Sam had gone about preparing her blood, confessing her greatest sin in the booth to the invisible priest. Or to God. She had not been sure which. Every hour, on the hour, she injected Crowley with a dose of the purified blood, and slowly he had begun to react to it. He had attacked her only once, biting her arm hard enough to draw a small pool of blood into his mouth. When she left to go bandage the wound, he'd summoned any demon listening to his aid. Little did he know that his reinforcements would consist of Abbadon, one of the Knights of Hell that were created by Cain himself, who had been trying to steal Hell's throne from Crowley. Sam expelled Abbadon from the vessel she had stolen by setting the body on fire, and still went on with the trial. She noticed changes in Crowley, though they were subtle, and she knew that the theory was working.

            Dean and Castiel, after obtaining a Cupid's bow, ran into Naomi. Castiel prepped to attack her, fueled by pent-up rage at her cruel mistreatment of him, but Dean had stalled him. Naomi was speaking about the trials, saying that Metatron's true plan was not to seal Heaven. It was to throw all the angels out of it. Castiel did not believe a word, but Dean was growing suspicious. Naomi pushed his terror over the edge when she mentioned that if Sam completed the trial, she would die. Dean had forced Castiel to take him to Sam, and when they got there, Castiel left again, justifying it by insisting that he had bigger fish to fry in Heaven. When Castiel got to Heaven, he was pinned to the same torture chair that Naomi had used on him, with Metatron behind the evil instruments. The Scribe had stolen Castiel's grace, the source of his power as an angel, which nearly killed him and subsequently turned him into a fumbling mortal when the spell to close Heaven was complete.

            Dean rushed inside the abandoned church they were using and found Sam close to injecting the final dosage of blood. He had held up his hands as he burst in, his girlfriend looking at him with fear in her eyes. "Easy there," Dean had said carefully, taking nonthreatening steps toward her. "Okay? Just take it easy. We've got a slight change in plan."

            "What?" she had responded, straightening a little. "What's going on? Where's Cas?"

            "Metatron lied," said Dean bluntly. "You finish this trial, you're dead, Sam."

            Sam's heart had missed a beat at the word _dead_ , her face falling, but immediately thereafter, she felt something like peace wash over her in an overpowering wave. She kept her eyes on Dean as the statement sunk in, the syringe wobbling in her trembling fingers. "... So?" she squeaked. Dean's face visibly paled by at least ten shades, even in the dimly lit room. Sam took his silence as an opportunity. She gestured at Crowley, chained and sitting complacently in the chair in the middle of the floor. "Look at him," she said. " _Look at him!_ Look how close we are! Other people will die if I don't finish this!"

            "Think about it," Dean told her, and she had heard the strain in his voice that it took to keep himself calm. "Think about what we know, huh? Pulling souls from Hell, curing demons, gankin' a hellhound? We have enough knowledge on our side to turn the tide here!" He took a step toward her; she gripped the syringe tighter. "But I can't do it without you."

            Sam had let out a breathy, icy laugh. "You can barely do it _with_ me! I mean, you think I screw up everything I try. You think I need a chaperone, remember?"

            "C'mon, Sammy," Dean pleaded. "That's not what I meant - "

            "No," she had interrupted. "No, that is... _exactly_... what you meant." She had straightened to her full height, then, staring at him as her throat constricted with repressed tears. She was not even really sure why she was crying, but the sensation overtook her. A tear trickled from her eye, cutting a thin line in the sweat and grime that lined her cheekbones. "You wanna know what I confessed in there?" she asked, jerking her head toward the confessional behind her. "What my greatest sin was?" Dean's eyes had shown incomprehension, and Sam took a deep breath.

            "It was how many times I let you down."

            He had seemed to deflate, the normal authority he commanded while in a room evaporating as if it were as fleeting as the wind. Suddenly Dean did not seem as big and bad as everybody thought he was. He was two inches tall, petrified that someone might step on him, trepidation in his expression but his legs paralytic and unmoving. "I can't do that again," she had whispered. He'd swallowed hard. "Sam - " he began, but a dry sob racked through her body and he quieted as she spoke tremulously. "What happens when you've decided I can't be trusted again? I mean, who are you gonna turn to next time instead of me? Another angel, another - another _vampire_?" Dean had cringed at the mention of Benny, who was the whole reason he had escaped Purgatory at all. Sam had been incredibly hurt, because Dean's trust in Benny appeared to be ten times his faith in her. She continued, "Do you have any idea what it's like to watch the person you love most in the world just - "

            "Hold on, hold on!" Dean had interjected forcefully, erecting a prickle of surprise in Sam's chest. His face was no longer shocked or pained; he looked somewhere between defiant and ardent. "You seriously think that? Because none of it - _none of it_ _-_ is true." He had taken a few steps forward now, but was not moving any more. His hold on her gaze was intense and earnest. "Listen, Sam, I know we've had our disagreements, okay? Hell, I know I've said some junk that set you back on your heels. But, Sammy... come on." His eyes shone fervidly. "I killed Benny to save _you_. I'm willing to let this bastard and all the sons of bitches that killed Mom walk _because of_ _you_. Don't you dare think that there is _anything_ , past or present, that I would put in front of you! It has never been like that, ever! I love you, Sam." That sentence had made Sam's blood run cold, not from shock or fright, but because she did not hear it very often. And, true to his ways, he added, "And I know I don't say that nearly enough, but I do. I love you more than I love anything else, more than I love the air and Baby and pie. _I love you._ I have always loved you, and I'm not going to lose you. I won't do it, Sam. Not again. Never again. I need you to see that. I'm begging you."

            Sam had stared at her arm, which was glowing an orangish-gold glow with the power that came from the purified blood. She hesitated, but there was no question about her decision. She would choose Dean, now, forever, and always. "How do I stop?" she'd asked shakily. He sprung forward, relieved, and said, "Just let it go." She had shaken her head at that. "I can't. It's _in me_ , Dean. You don't know what that's like."

            He took a bandana and wrapped it around the cut on her hand, which she'd slit to press to Crowley's mouth. "We'll get through it," he breathed to her surely. "Just like we always do." Then he had pulled her to him and hugged her as tightly as he could, ensuring that she couldn't slip away again. She had snaked her arms around him, pressing herself closer and closer, and prayed internally that they could just stay like that forever. That they would never have to move. When she opened her eyes again, Sam had seen that the glow on her arm had vanished. "Dean," she whispered, backing away so he could see it too. He smiled. "See?" he prompted happily. "I've got you, Sammy. You're gonna be just fine."

            Without warning, in the middle of her relieved laugh, Sam had doubled over in torment, groaning loudly. The pain did not start gently and increase in intensity; it began as white-hot, furious agony, pulsating from the tips of her toes to her nailbeds. Everything had been on fire, burning and impossible to ignore. Dean caught her just before she crashed to the ground, and half-carried her outside, echoing her name. They collapsed against the side of the Impala, and he started shouting for Castiel in the darkness. Sam's gasping was becoming more desperate, as if the air was solid around her. When Castiel did not appear, Dean's heart had nearly imploded with terror. Then, as suddenly as she'd fallen, Sam's breathing slowed again and she stared at him as he stared at the sky, his attention caught. "No, Cas," he'd murmured to the night.

            Little balls of golden light were plummeting from the clouds down to the earth below. They looked like tiny orbs of fire, or the purest of light, speeding toward the ground at such a rapid pace that Dean feared they would cause an earthquake. And it had not been a few tens, or even hundreds. No, these were thousands upon thousands of balls of light. Dean did not have to think hard to realize what he was watching.

            "What's happening?" Sam had wheezed.

            Dean's heartrate picked up a notch. "The angels," he replied. "They're falling."

            Castiel had been correct when he had said that Sam was damaged beyond his repair. She collapsed that night and did not reawaken for days. Dean prayed and prayed for Castiel to come, unknowing that he was now a human and could not hear his prayers. Soon, agitated and desperate, Dean opened up his prayer to all the angels, any who would help. Within hours, an angel who called himself Ezekiel appeared at the hospital, offering to fix Sam back up from the inside out. Together, Dean and Ezekiel tricked Sam into accepting the angel into him. Ezekiel used Dean's plan of proposal to lure her in. Luckily, Sam did not remember seeing the engagement ring, nor the wedding ring, nor hearing of the plan. From then on, Ezekiel lived inside of her, patching her back together. As he said, she was all pins and needles on the inside. Dean was wary of the angel lurking inside his girlfriend, but more so he was thankful that she would be alright.

            He did not tell Sam about Ezekiel - and the angel did not tell Dean who he truly was. Because this was not Ezekiel, the kindhearted angel that even Castiel trusted. No, this angel's name was really Gadreel, and he had been imprisoned in Heaven since the dawn of humanity. Gadreel had been the guardian of the Garden of Eden, stationed to keep out all evils and protect Adam and Eve. However, he let Lucifer slip in disguised as a serpent, and God punished Gadreel by locking him in Heaven's prison for eternity. The fall of the angels from Heaven had released him, and though he was truly working to repair Sam, he knew that being inside a Winchester would protect him from the other angels' animosity.


	33. It Was Always You

                   Presently, Sam was sitting alone at the table in the bunker, and wishing Castiel was here again. He had been there not long ago, bedraggled and tired-looking because of the toll human life had on him. Sam had seen him for a total of fifteen seconds, and when she came back in the room, he was gone. Dean insisted that Castiel thought it would be dangerous for him to stay, but Sam was not so sure. She didn't question it, though. But she did miss the angel terribly.

            She still did not know of the archaically reprobate angel working inside her body.

            Dean came around the corner as she sighed, and his expression shifted. "I dunno what you're upset about, but I think a sandwich will probably cheer you up," he offered, setting a plate down in front of her. She beamed up at him with a fluttery feeling in her chest. He kissed her on the top of the head, then sat beside her with his own meal. Sam picked around at the bread for a moment, examining the delicious-smelling grilled chicken, before taking a bite. Every time she ate Dean's cooking, she grew more and more impressed. She made a sound of approval, to which Dean laughed, "I'm tellin' ya, Sam. When life slows down a little, I'm gonna open a restaurant."

            She looked at him sideways. "Do you know how much work and money that requires?"

            "I mean, yeah... We're good with credit card fraud, so - "

            Sam laughed, the first full-out laugh she had let herself do in a while. Dean looked pleased with himself as he took another bite of the sandwich. There had been a few minutes of comfortable silence stretching between them when Dean quipped quite suddenly, "So I've been thinkin'... D'you wanna get married?"

            Swallowing hard so she wouldn't choke, Sam subconsciously sat up straighter. "Huh?" she inquired, though she'd heard him rather clearly. Instead of seeing the typical uncertain glance that he wore when discussing their relationship, she realized that Dean looked extraordinarily calm, considering the weight of the question he'd just asked. He angled his body toward her, leaning his elbows on his knees. "I said," he replied gently, "do you want to get married?"

            Sam felt her blood turn to ice in her veins, and her heart stopped beating altogether for a very brief second. He was being so casual... Was this some sort of proposal, or just some question? Did he want to know for future reference? Or was he _asking_? She wanted to groan in confusion but she was too busy trying to catch her breath.

            "I'm not sure I understand what you're asking me," she said finally, looking directly into his beautiful green eyes. As if he had heard her thoughts a moment ago Dean stood from his chair and pushed it a few feet away with his boot. Then he knelt down on his knee, rolling his eyes in typical Dean fashion, and pulled out a small black box. Sam still could not breathe. He opened the box to reveal a little diamond ring. Nothing too ostentatious or flashy, and it didn't look like it cost a fortune, but it was the most beautiful ring she had ever laid eyes on. Maybe that was just because _he_ was holding it. She supposed that she would never know.

            "I'm asking you to marry me, Sammy," he told her after a beat. At long last, Sam could exhale, and it came out in a shallow huff. Her mouth suddenly felt very dry. "'Cuz ya see, I've been wanting to marry you for years. I've had this ring with me for about fifteen months, just tryin' to find the right time to pop the question. Maybe now wasn't the _best_ time, but... no goin' back now." His eyes zigzagged to her feet, and then a thought seemed to come to him. He reached out and touched her hand, his calloused fingers coming into contact with the silver band of the promise ring he had given her over ten years ago. With a tenderness he rarely exuded, Dean cradled her hand in his, staring at the ring. "I guess that was the worthwhile promise, huh?" he chuckled lowly. "That one day we'd get married and have a family of our own. That's what you've always wanted, and that's what I want to give you." He held up the black box and balanced it on her knee. A wobbly smile began creeping across Sam's face as he said, "Sam Winchester, will you marry me and legally be able to adopt my last name?"

            Sam giggled, though she really felt like crying. No words formed in her throat; all she could manage was a nod of her head, which caused Dean's eyes to widen as if he was not expecting it. "Is that a yes?" he confirmed. She laughed again and kissed him. He seemed to melt at her touch. When they broke apart, he plucked the ring from the velvet interior of the box and carefully slid it onto her left ring finger. Sam stared at it for a moment, enraptured by the way it sparkled with glee, before clearing her throat and asking with a little laugh, "When will we have time?"

            "Well... I've also had the actual wedding rings ready for a while now, so if it's not too early, how about tomorrow...?"

            "Dean Winchester, you sickening romantic."

            "Shut up." He pressed his lips to hers, his hand on the back of her neck, and the turmoil of the world around them faded. Everything around Sam consisted of four letters, green eyes, and skin that was both rough and soft at the same time. Everything around Sam became Dean, once again, and she was more than okay with that.

            "I love you," he told her in between kisses. She smiled. "I know."


	34. What Is And What Should Never Be

                   About three months after he proposed, they had gotten married. It hadn't been the day after, as he'd suggested. Life got in the way more than they would have liked. And it hadn't been much of a ceremony, either - who could they invite? And to top it off, there been almost no planning behind it. One day, while Ezekiel (truly Gadreel) had been working inside Sam, Dean had taken the angel's absence as an opportunity, and rightly so. They said their vows after being added to a queue and waiting for two hours in a chapel two towns over. After all the problems and betrayals and fighting, after twenty-nine years for Sam and thirty-four for Dean, they were finally married.

            Naturally, as it seems, for every good thing that happens to the Winchesters, there must also be at least ten or so bad to follow.

            Dean discovered Gadreel's true identity, and he and Crowley worked together to cast the angel out of Sam. Gadreel had been in league with Metatron, the Scribe who stole Castiel's grace, and had murdered the young prophet, Kevin, on his command. Dean walked in just in time to see the boy's death, but not in time to stop it. When Sam realized what Dean had done - tricking her into accepting the presence of the angel who failed God's plan for Eden - , she became enraged, but on a level she had never been before. She did not scream as much as she felt she should, nor did she explode on him. Quite the contrary: when Sam understood what had happened, she simply walked away, resolving that Dean had lost her trust forever. This broke Dean's heart, but he could never tell her that. They went their separate ways, taking cases and patching themselves up while blocking one another out, as is the Winchester way.

            Sam and Castiel spent a majority of their time in the bunker of the Men of Letters when Dean left. It came to Castiel's attention that a bit of grace residue, just a trace of the angel magic, had remained in Sam when Gadreel fled. It was harmless and would not have hurt Sam, but it could have been used so they could cast a spell to track Gadreel down again. They attempted to extract it, but the process was excruciatingly painful for Sam, though she never outright admitted this. Despite urging him to press on and remove the grace, Castiel refused to go any further. Sam had been reverting to the state she had been in before Gadreel had healed her, and this worried the compassionate, lovesick Castiel greatly. He put it quite simply for her when she protested: " _Nothing_ is worth losing you."

            He tried to bring up Dean later on, to get her to realize he had done what he'd done because he loved her, but Sam wasn't ready to talk about it yet. She went about clearing the spell books off the table and said, "I know that, when you love someone, you sometimes do things you shouldn't do. Believe me, I get that. But trust is trust, and when that's broken, you don't have much else. And besides" - It was here that she flashed Castiel a tiny smile, though smiling was the last thing she felt like doing - "we all need something to fight for. Some people do it for love, some for justice, some for truth. People like Dean fight for family. To feel like it's all okay again, I guess it's just a matter of finding what's worth the fight, you know?"

            "Oh, I already have my motivation for starting and ending any war," replied Castiel, his deep voice and seriousness bringing a light laugh to Sam's throat. The smile she gave him then had been genuine. "Oh yeah?" she chuckled, turning away to stack a pile of weighty books on a nearby end table. "And what's that?"

            And the moment she had turned around, Castiel had been directly behind her. He closed the minimal space between them before she had fully faced him, cupping both her cheeks and pressing his lips to her own. Some part of Sam had been expecting it, but it was a small part, and it was overshadowed by two exceptionally strong sensations. One was surprise; the other was longing. She half-collapsed into the pillar behind her, and they had kissed for a few seconds more before the angel pulled away and looked very deeply into her eyes. As if he could delve into her soul and figure out how it worked.

            "You," was all he said in response, but it was far more than enough to suffice. Before she had known what she was doing, they had migrated into her bedroom and made love for the second time, though this was quite different from the first. Neither was afraid, and neither was shy. It was less of an act of passion and whim, like the first time had been, and more of a feeling of two becoming one. It was comfortable, welcome, and when it was done, Sam felt no shame because Castiel fell asleep with his arms around her.

            The next morning, however, was plagued by a novel feeling. Sam had handed him a cup of coffee, earning an amused glance from the angel, before she remembered that he said all food and drink tasted merely like their molecules. "More for me," she'd laughed. Castiel had waited a moment, gathering his courage, and then said, "Sam... we need to talk about it."

            Sam's face fell, and she could feel it, but she couldn't bring herself to correct the slip. So she just cleared her throat. "I know," she had answered, setting her coffee down on the table in the main room of the bunker where they stood. She looked at Castiel as he seemed to grapple with his thoughts a bit.

            "I'm still in love with you, Sam," he had said at last, causing Sam's heart to drop into her stomach. It was the first time she had ever heard those words spoken by him at a regular volume, and it both filled her with ecstasy and pure sadness. "I haven't stopped loving you, and I highly doubt I ever will. But I'm not the only one who openly says that anymore. Look... You and Dean are my family. You two are all I have. And with everything happening around here, I don't want to be another thing wedging between you."

            "Cas - "

            "Sam, you and Dean were made for each other. I remember. A match _literally_ made in Heaven. I just... I don't know. I was selfish. I didn't think it was fair that he was destined to love you and I never even got the chance. But that was long before I knew you both personally, and even longer before I realized that you were paired for a reason. Dean would do anything for you, and I know you'd do the same for him. You need each other. And even though I do too, I know he needs you more."

            Sam's throat had been very dry and constricted, and Castiel's pain-filled gaze did nothing to calm her heart, but she managed to choke out levelly, "I love Dean. I do. I always have. But... I love you, too, Cas."

            She would never forget the look he gave her right then. His eyes lit up; his cheeks flooded. She realized a beat too late that he had never heard her say that, whispered or shouted. Other than kisses, she had never even so much as given him an indication that she felt the same way. The joy on his face was beyond any she had ever seen. "And with all of this with Dean... I just don't know what to do," she'd finished weakly, dropping his stare.

            A full second of silence followed, and then the angel said, "Choose Dean."

            Sam's heart had skipped a beat. "What?" she breathed. The excited gleam in Castiel's brilliant blue eyes had dimmed, replaced now by something like defeat. "Choose Dean," he repeated. "He's your husband. He's your _soulmate_ , Sam. I'm just somebody who loves you. But from now on, I won't let that... cloud my judgement. I won't allow it to overtake me as it has in the past. I'll redirect it into protecting you - and Dean, of course."

            And that was that. Castiel never made an advance at Sam after that day, though he would think about it time and time again. He forced himself into keeping her safe, and helping her and Dean the best he could.


	35. It's Just The Beginning, This Isn't The End

                   When Dean returned, sparks arose between him and Sam. Friction was high. They were always tense around one another, arguing almost consistently, and Sam kept insisting that they were only together to solve a problem. She had wanted nothing to do with him - though, in all actuality, she missed him terribly. Her anger simply blanketed the feeling until she'd numbed it out.

            Of course, their relationship gradually progressed and got better as time went on, as it typically did. After a while, they were almost alright again. But Dean had something evil lurking within him, something given to him by Cain, one of the first representations of God's rejection in the Bible. The Mark of Cain was now branded on Dean's arm, giving him full authority to wield the First Blade, the only weapon capable of killing a Knight of Hell like Abbadon. Dean had been tricked into receiving the Mark by Crowley, the king of double-crossing. A violent streak erupted in the Winchester, much more powerful than the one he already possessed. He frightened Sam.

            Things would come to a head when Metatron set the Winchesters up by capturing Castiel in Heaven and cornering Dean in a warehouse. Even with the extra power the Mark gave him, Dean couldn't defeat the angel. Sam would get there in time to see the former Scribe of God stab Dean in the chest with an angel blade.

            She felt a scream rip through her throat, but she could not hear the sound it made. Though, she knew it made one, because Metatron turned and grinned at her. Really, she did not remember how she got to Dean's side at all, but she was there and they were alone and he was bleeding. There was so much blood everywhere. She put her hands on the sides of his face and tried to get him to focus on her, to stay awake. She heard herself saying things to him, but she couldn't decipher the words. Whatever she was telling him, she hoped and prayed that it would keep him tethered to life.

            "Sammy, you gotta get out of here before he comes back." His voice was weak and raspy, and it frightened Sam more than his violence ever did. She grabbed a cloth and fumbled with it, trying to stifle the bleeding. "Shh, shh, shh," she whispered. "Shut up. Just save your energy, alright? Oh, man," she added under her breath as his blood started soaking through the cloth. "We'll stop the bleeding. We'll - we'll get you a doctor, or-or I'll find a spell. You're gonna be okay." Her voice broke on the last sentence, and to cover her trembling, she took Dean's hand and pressed it to his chest firmly. Her fingers wrapped around his hand, like he could offer some sort of protection to her now.

            "Listen to me," he said weakly. "It's better this way."

            " _What?_ "

            Dean gasped slightly, as if he could not get enough air into his lungs. "The Mark," he expounded. "It's making me into something I don't want to be."

            "Don't worry about the Mark. We'll figure out the Mark later. Just hold on, okay?" She stood up and grasped his arm, carefully draping it over her shoulder. Then she wrapped her arm around his waist and hauled him to his feet. He moaned loudly in agony, and though it was only one sound, it pierced Sam's heart like a thousand knives. She started staggering toward the exit, making sure to keep his hand on his wound.

            As if the moment weren't bad enough, every awful thing she had ever said to Dean came flooding back to her in a tidal wave of memory. She almost tripped over all the foul, hateful words she threw at him. One of the most prominent ones was a more recent remembrance, where she said she didn't really care if he died. It was the worst thing she had ever said to him, by far, and even then, she hadn't meant it. Like he could hear her, Dean turned his head and peered at her sideways as they struggled across the concrete floor. "What happened to you being okay with this?"

            "I lied."

            He was silent for a moment, but Sam could see his signature amused smirk painting his face. So many emotions filled her heart that she felt she might explode. "Ain't that a bitch," he commented breathily. Then he gasped, clutching at the cloth on his chest, and Sam managed to slip her other hand on top of his, adding extra pressure. They hobbled along as best they could for another few minutes, but then Dean spoke again. This time, there was very little life in his voice.

            "Sam. Hold up. Hold up."

            Against her better judgement, Sam paused and leaned her husband on a piece of nearby equipment. There was fresh blood leaking from his mouth. She could see that he could hardly breathe. "I gotta say something to you." Sam kept one hand on his waist, holding him upright, and put the other on his shoulder. "What?" she whispered.

            Dean moved his hand from her shoulder to her cheek, tangling his fingers in her hair. At every brush of his skin she felt her insides alight with fury and pain, but she could do no more than stare into his fading green eyes. _Fading_... because that's what they were doing, wasn't it? The beautiful color of his beautiful eyes was slowly seeping out, like there was a puncture in them. Now that she looked properly, Sam remembered just how much the word _beautiful_ described this man. Her best friend. Everything about him was breathtaking and practically ethereal, from his body to his laugh to his heart. He had always questioned why he was the righteous man, but Sam had known. No matter what he thought, Dean was always the purest of the Winchesters. Purest of heart, purest of souls. His only goal, all along, was to preserve his family and keep her safe. And that's what he'd done - but at the expense of his life.

            Her husband drew a rattling breath that drove a deep crack in her heart. "I'm proud of us," he rasped. "And I love you. I never said that enough. I love you, I love you, _I love you_. So much. I will always love you. I'm sorry I never really showed you that. I-I'm sorry, Sammy."

            His thumb rubbed her cheekbone as a tear slipped from her eye. She felt like collapsing into his arms and sobbing and never leaving his embrace, but even that was more movement than she was capable of. Fear had crippled her: the fear of losing him forever. A forever that was much longer that the one when he was dragged to Hell by the hellhounds; a forever much more permanent than when he was trapped in Purgatory. This forever really meant forever, and the idea of facing every moment without him suddenly knocked all the air from her lungs, because weren't they supposed to have a family? Weren't they supposed to buy a house and settle down? Didn't he promise, not a week and a half prior to this day, that one day very soon they would leave the bunker and leave the life of hunting and leave behind all the bad memories and death? Didn't he promise that he would be a great father, so much better than John ever was, and that he looked forward to the day where a toddler would run up to him with open arms and shriek, "Daddy," and hug him as tight as they could? Didn't he promise all this? Didn't he swear he wouldn't leave her? Didn't he vow to a life together?

            _Till Death do us part._

Sam didn't think Death had the right to decide.

            "Sam..."

Dean's eyes slid shut before she had time to think. She touched his cheek gently, then shook his shoulder a little. "Hey," she said kind of loudly, so that her voice echoed in the vast, empty room. "Hey. Hey, hey... Wake up, buddy." Her voice cracked up a bit as she felt Dean slouching beneath her grip, his muscles relaxing. Terror wrapped its ugly hands around her heart and it was all she could do not to start screaming. "Hey, wake up, Dean." She shook him one more time. "Dean. _Dean!_ "

            All he did was lean lifelessly forward, his forehead falling onto her shoulder.

            At long last, the dam in Sam's tear ducts broke, and she began to cry uncontrollably against him. The sobs racked her body until she couldn't hold herself on her feet. She fell to the ground, Dean's body slumping down with her. His shoulder pressed to her chest, she held tightly to him and rocked him back and forth, unable to stop the tears from flowing out of her. She could not hear how loudly she was crying, but it echoed around the room and her bones shook with the reverberations.

            She'd never quite done this around Dean. Never quite broken down entirely. She'd cried, of course. And sometimes it was a much-needed violent cry. But it had never been like this. Nothing had ever destroyed her so much as to require her to literally fall to the ground, in physical and emotional torment, and cling to something that was now inanimate.

            All her life she'd dreamt of marrying Dean. She'd had these fantasies as a little girl that they'd grow up, be best friends forever, run away from their father, get married and have three kids. She had always been in love with him, though she hadn't become aware until much, much later. And she had planned to tell him that one day, maybe after their first child was born.

            Now she would never get the chance.

            She could have been there for years, for all she knew. When she stood again, all concept of time had flown out the window. Nothing seemed to matter anymore. It was as if the laws of reality were bending around her; she could lift Dean's body with ease as she carried him from the premises and laid him in the car - his car. The Impala. Sam drove back to the bunker with hollowness devouring her insides like a rabid animal, feeding on any last remnants of life left within her until she was just a shell. No more tears came.

            Carrying him down the stairs into the bunker was the hardest part, she thought dimly. She had to haul his bloodied body into his room and lay him down on his bed. Time passed very quickly, effortlessly, like God was trying to make up for the fact that He'd taken the only thing that mattered to her. Sam sat on the edge of Dean's bed when she had him situated on it, so that he might have been sleeping, and she took his hand in her own and stared at his face. She willed him to open his eyes, to breathe that shocked breath and demand to know how he was alive, like he had done so many other times. And she would have insisted that she didn't know, which he wouldn't have believed, but that she was overjoyed nonetheless. She would've thrown herself into his arms, grinning ear to ear, her heart full of love and happiness and relief.

            But when four hours passed, according to the clock, and he had not made so much as a twitch, some new feeling settled in. Not quite dread, not quite sadness, and not quite helplessness. It was more than that, so much more.

            She supposed that was what made her summon Crowley. She couldn't name what she was feeling, and she needed Dean to help her sort it out. That was her best explanation. That was the deep reasoning she had for what she wanted Crowley to do. That was the extent of it, right then. If she'd had more time to think about it, she could have listed the reasons until Judgement Day came. She could have gone on until the end of eternity, listing each and every reason why she wanted Dean with her, wanted Dean alive, wanted Dean with her _and_ alive. But there was no time. So she summoned him and sat in the other room, drinking until even the nameless feeling became nothing but a numb pulse in her veins.

            And when she went into Dean's room after Crowley disappeared, she expected one of two things. Either to see him sitting on the bed, breathing deeply and trying to assess what had happened, or lying still and cold, nothing about him different.

            What she did not expect was to find an empty bed, in an empty room, with no sign he had ever been there at all.

            What she did not expect was to see a note written in his unmistakable handwriting.

            _Sammy, let me go._

            What she did not expect was to collapse again, but this time with nothing tangible to hold to other than this damning scrap of paper.

            What she did not expect was that Dean's death was not, in fact, the forever end.

            It was to be the beginning.


	36. Desperate Measures

Sam pulled up to the old rundown bar and grille, her heart pounding out of her chest. She jerked the keys out of the Impala's ignition and took a deep breath. The mere second that this simple action took seemed to last an eternity, and yet she still didn't feel prepared to walk in. She didn't know what she would find. She had no way of knowing if Dean was angry, surrounded by pools of blood and piles of bodies, as had been his fashion recently. Or if he was eerily calm, a blade in hand, waiting for the opportune moment to strike once and for all. Or if he might be casually sitting at a table, eating a cheeseburger, acting so very Dean in a way that would surely destroy her on the spot. Of if he would be dead on the floor when she walked in, and she would have to carry his lifeless body home again, with no hope of ever bringing him back.

Sam knew none of these things.

Dean's death a few months prior had indeed been the beginning of a long, tiresome, bloody story. In the time he was away from the heartbroken Sam, Dean had stricken up an unlikely alliance with Crowley. He and the hellish so-called King jumped from place to place, but usually ended back up at a bar in Beulah, North Dakota. In their spare time, the pair drank massive amounts of beer, and murdered any small annoyances that were unfortunate enough to cross their paths. Because of the Mark of Cain - and, of course, since he was now a demon - Dean had an unquenchable bloodthirst that could only be temporarily satisfied by killing or brutally harming someone. It was as if he had lost himself entirely.

The fact of the matter was that he hadn't. In truth, Dean was very much aware of everything he did: every murder he committed, beating he partook in, and cutthroat insult he threw reverberated quite clearly in his head. He was still inside, but he had no control of his body or mind. The demon, the part of him that was soulless due to his death and resurrection, overpowered every advance he attempted at freedom. Dean was trapped in his own body.

When Sam found him and saw him face-to-face for the first time since he was killed, her expression was unforgettable. The tiny sliver of the real Dean that was left knew he would remember it until the day he died, for real. There was immense pain in her eyes, blurred by tears, and a hardened determination on her face. And she just kept saying, "I'm bringing you home."

Naturally, the demon did not take too kindly to this show of undying affection. Sam wouldn't give up, though. Just the opposite. Her search for a way to save him was now more empowered than ever, Castiel working by her side as much as he could manage.

Sam miraculously found a way to capture Dean and trap him in the bunker. It was there, in the very chamber where so many of their enemies had sat, that she began the tolling process of curing the demon. But Dean took to it differently than any other demon had; it seemed to hurt him astronomically more than it had the rest. Sam feared that her husband was teetering on the precipice of death's cliff, and she was actually pushing him further off its edge.

When Sam left the room for a few precious moments, Dean escaped, and hours' worth of a deadly hide-and-seek game ensued. The soul-lacking demon spat that he would not think twice about murdering Sam with his bare hands, and she believed him. He came within a fraction of a millisecond of crushing her skull with a hammer. Thankfully, Castiel always knew the right time to show up. He grabbed Dean from behind and restrained him back into the chair so Sam could administer the last few syringes of purified blood, which she'd hijacked from a truck that was headed to a blood bank. When she'd finished, Dean looked up at the pair of them, fear and innocence shining in his green eyes. "You look a little worried there, guys," he had quipped good-naturedly. Sam splashed him with holy water, and when he did not recoil and his skin did not sizzle, the weight of the world flew off her chest. "Welcome back, Dean," she breathed in reply.

It took lots of explaining to tell Dean everything that had happened, but even yet Sam spared him the gory details of what lengths she had gone to in order to get him back. He would find out, though, as he always did, but all in all, nothing could bother her now. He was back. He was alive. He was human. And they were going to cure him of the Mark, one way or another. She had her husband back, and that was all she wanted.

But Dean did not get better. His temper flared violently, sometimes uncontrollably during the cases they worked on, and though she tried to hide it, it frightened Sam. _Dean_ frightened Sam, and that was one thing he had never done.

Dean went through four stages as they raced to cure him. Sam kept track of them. The first was anger. He was always so mad, at everything, even if it was irrational. His irritation would come from nowhere and last for different amounts of time. She could never predict them or time how long they lasted, because as soon as she was in the right mind to do so, it was over. It was as though he had developed a bipolar disorder, going from perfectly normal to inconsolably distressed in under a minute. Once, he wanted to wear a white t-shirt under his jacket, but then realized he did not own a white t-shirt and threw his entire duffel bag out of the motel room window. Comical though it sounds, Sam feared the next outbreak.

The second was avoidance. He simply would not acknowledge the Mark, or what it was doing to him. He blamed all his unwarranted outbursts on a lack of both sleep and alcohol. This stage lasted the least amount of time, only about a week or so. His angry spells still happened, but it seemed as though he were trying to suppress them, possibly because of his denial of the Mark's existence.

Oddly enough, acceptance was not the last step. It was the third, and it lasted by far the longest. Dean began to accept his "fate," as he called it, though Sam heatedly disagreed. Dean's idea of his destiny consisted of him fighting off the Mark's power for as long as he conceivably could, and then giving in to its evil and dying. The thing that scared Sam the most was that this did not appear to be the sort of acceptance that she was used to. This was not the subdued, "last resort" sort of acceptance. It was as if he truly believed that his demise was the only way the path would end. It broke her heart more and more every day, because although Dean seemed to have given up, she was not so easily intimidated. She would have to fight for his life enough for the both of them.

And that she did.

Through her search to find a cure for the Mark, Sam uncovered the myth of something called, _The Book of the Damned._ Only it was no myth it all. The book existed, and inside it were the detailed instructions and reverse instructions for every dark magic spell ever created. When Charlie - one of the Winchesters' few best friends who also greatly aided them in the defeat of the Leviathan and had been in the land of Oz for a long time - returned (and Sam and Dean put her good and evil halves back together), she was more than ready to help save Dean. The search for _The Book_ was a desperate and worrisome one for Sam, but Dean did not seem to be as thrilled as his wife when news came that it had been found. He did not care that the book was completely incomprehensible, written in an unknown language that was double coded. No, Dean was far more concerned with the homicidal, ruthless family that had been tailing Charlie ever since she retrieved _The Book._

The Stynes were one of Europe's oldest living families, dating back to the early 1800s, where they almost materialized out of nothing onto the pages of history. They were known by a very different name, back then, however: Frankenstein. The family that the famous story was based on actually existed. They really _did_ section off parts of select humans and severed them in order to add them to members of the family who lacked in certain areas, be it strength or speed or muscle.

Sam had been backed into a corner. Neither she nor Charlie nor Castiel could read _The Book of the Damned._ Dean kept getting worse and worse by the minute, and the spellbook _was_ written by witches, after all, so Sam did the only thing she could think of. She contacted an incredibly powerful witch that the Winchesters had had a run-in with a few weeks back named Rowena, and asked her to decipher the layers of code. The centuries-old Scottish redhead agreed under a few strict conditions, one of which was rather welcome: that Sam kill Rowena's son, Crowley. After the initial shock of learning the relation between the two, Sam was more than happy to acquiesce to the witch's terms.

She also had to find something called a Codex, which was hidden in the basement of an old house in St. Louis. It was locked inside of a box that was specially designed by Cuthbert Sinclair, a previously immortal Man of Letters who had attempted to "collect" Dean and the First Blade because Dean had the Mark of Cain. This box, called Werther, let loose spirits every time someone tried to open it, and the spirits possessed everyone within the house at the time, forcing them to see visions that would inevitably lead them to commit suicide. Sam narrowly retrieved the Codex without telling Dean anything about it, simply because the box itself was case-worthy.

Dean did not know that Sam still had _The Book_ when she went to Rowena for help. He was certain that it had burned in a fireplace the same night that Charlie had given it to them. A part of Sam felt traitorous keeping it, because of how strongly her husband had spoken about its effect on him - _"That thing's been calling out to me since I laid eyes on it, Sam. It wants me to use it, and not for good" -_ but a much bigger part was driven by the prospect of losing him forever. The more the thought became a reality, the more resolute she became to never allow it to be so.

Charlie did not live to see Dean be set free from the Mark. She died protecting him, and _The Book_ , down to her last second. When the couple found her, bloodied and broken in the bathtub of the motel room she'd snuck away to, Sam nearly vomited. One thought had replayed itself over and over in her mind as the image of the sweet young ginger seared into her brain: _She's dead, and it's your fault. Your fault. Your fault. YOUR FAULT._

Dean had agreed that it was her fault as they burned Charlie's body, the proper hunter's burial. "I think it should be you up there and not her." Those eleven words would stick with Sam for a lifetime.

But Charlie, true to her wonderful self, had cracked the code just seconds before she was murdered by one of the Stynes, and she emailed it to Sam's phone. Sam received it the next day as she tearfully broke the news to Castiel, who blamed himself for her death. She showed the photos that Charlie sent to Rowena, but even with this new information, the witch refused to set to work reading _The Book_ until Crowley was dead. Sam came close to killing him, using both a ridiculously potent hex bag made by his mother and an angel blade, but in the end, it was Crowley who allowed to her to walk away from the fight. When she returned to Rowena, they had to set about gathering ancient Biblical ingredients, like the Forbidden Fruit of Eden and the Golden Calf. Once everything was gathered, Sam received a call from Castiel, who told her that Dean had slaughtered the entire Styne family, leaving no survivors whatsoever at the estate. And he was still on the move.

Dean returned to the bunker to find intruders. Mercilessly (and quite rightfully so, in this aspect), he murdered the man who killed Charlie, and then shot an innocent boy in the head. That was when Castiel, who entered just as the final killing took place, knew that he was too far gone. Dean then very nearly beat Castiel to death, and came within 3 inches of stabbing him with an angel blade. Some part of Dean's compassion must have remained throughout the fight, because if it hadn't, he would not have let Castiel live.


	37. It's The Story Of Your Life

                   All that brought Sam to where she was now. Outside of the bar/restaurant. Breathing as deeply as her lungs would allow. Clutching the Impala's keys so tightly that it left groove marks in her palm. Completely terrified of what she would find when she walked in.

             He had called her not twenty minutes ago, telling her to grab a pen and paper because it was time to say goodbye. He had left the keys to the Impala in his decimated motel room, along with a short note in his handwriting - _she's all yours._ Sam didn't want it to be all hers, and he was well aware of this. She supposed that it was this that drove her to jump out of the car and stride through the front doors of the building. Not the fear, nor anxiety, nor utter dread of the scene that may have awaited her. It was the fact that she needed to tell him, one last time, that this wasn't his call. That he did not get to decide.

             Classic Winchester move, having to get the last word.

             The door closed quietly behind her, and the room opened up capaciously. There were few tables, and those that were present were small and round, with a huge wooden stage at the front of the room. She stopped short when she saw him, standing in the very middle of the floor. Like he was waiting on her. His face was worn and kind of pale, as if he hadn't slept in days. Perhaps he hadn't. She had no way of knowing. There was another figure present, too, and she noticed him only dimly.

             Death.

             "Hey," she said breathlessly to her husband, trying not to let the Horseman's presence intimidate her. She gestured around vaguely. "What is this? What's going on?"

             Dean sighed. "We need to talk."

             Sam took a step toward him with her hand outstretched slightly. "Whatever you're thinking of doing," she softly said to him, "don't. There's another way. You don't need to go with him. Y-you don't need to... to _die!_ "

             Of all ways to respond, Dean simply shrugged. Sam felt a bubble of anger explode in her stomach but she kept quiet as he spoke. "Funny you say that," Dean told her, striding around a bit before stopping behind her. "Truth is, when I left, I thought the only way out _was_ my death. Well, I was wrong, Sam." She turned to face him.

             "It's yours."

             Sam's breath froze in her lungs, her heart rate quadrupling in speed. She was completely bewildered. What did he mean, her death was the only way out? How could that possibly be? She gaped at him as he stood there, his face impassive and unfeeling, and then turned her head to look at the old man that was Death. He, however, was paying little to no attention to the interaction. The Horseman was standing beside the stage, munching on a plateful of what appeared to be tamales. The unconcernedness of their demeanors only further terrified her.

             Dean went on to explain how they had arrived at this conclusion. He told Sam about how he summoned Death to the restaurant and attempted to bribe him with food so that the ancient man would do what Dean asked. The Winchester had known, before he ever began the summoning, that what he requested was impossible. He knew that it could not be, because the Mark would not allow it, but he had to try. So he told Death when the latter arrived, "I want you to kill me."

             For Dean Winchester, the fourth and final stage of grief was bargaining.

             But even Death could not kill him, which Dean knew, deep down. But Death's reason for not doing so or removing the Mark, as he told Dean he could, was not because it was impossible or that he was invincible. It was for a much more unexpected cause, one that Dean did not presently tell Sam. The Mark of Cain was something of a lock that had kept the most horrible evil hidden away since before the dawn of Creation. Before God created life or light or the Heavens, He battled this turpitude, called the Darkness, and when He won, He sealed it away forever. It was bound by the one thing that represented malevolence and villainy in its purest form: the Mark of Cain. When Cain killed his brother Abel, God branded him with the Mark, which would never allow him the sweet release of death. It was always meant to simply be a reminder, an unbreakable lock and key. But over the years, the Mark became a curse, causing Cain to fester in his immorality and wickedness. And Cain passed that curse - and the physical Mark - to Dean, so now Dean held the key to the Darkness's eternal imprisonment. Death could not kill Dean Winchester because, in doing so, he would set the Darkness free for the first time since God came into existence.

             Dean felt no need to tell Sam any of this. He reasoned that it was because he did not have the patience, but something small yet fierce in his heart did not want to see the hope drain from her eyes when she realized that there was no way for him to ever be fully human again. Seeing the life drain from them would be hard enough.

             Death's resulting alternate master plan was simple: to send Dean far away, into another world, even, so that he would not hurt anyone else.

             It was at this point in Dean's explanation that Sam shook her head, breathing fast and deep. " _What?_ " she demanded hoarsely. "He's gonna... gonna send you into _outer space?_ "

             "No! Well, he didn't say 'outer space,' but..."

             "This is _madness_ , Dean!"

             "Far from it, I'm afraid." Sam rolled her eyes at Death's sudden interjection, pacing a few steps. Her heart was pounding against her chest. If she could just get to the sane part of Dean, the part that loved her, she could talk him out of sending himself away. "No one's asking you," she snapped at the Horseman. "Hear him out!" Dean shot back defensively. Sam stared, lost.

             Death straightened his back as he leaned against the stage. "The conundrum is quite simple, Sam. Your husband cannot be killed, and the Mark cannot be destroyed, not without inciting a far greater evil than any of us have ever known."

             "What evil?" she replied skeptically.

             Dean sighed, inwardly cursing the fact that Death had brought it up. "The Darkness," he told his wife seriously. Sam's eyebrows pulled together in a way that made Dean's stomach leap, but it was different. It was as if the sensation was long dead, and he was just feeling its ghost. The memory of the excitement of his love for her. The Mark was rapidly eating away at any residue of emotion that he had left, so that was all he had, now. Memories of how he felt.

             "What the hell is that?" Sam asked, her voice a little shrill. "Well what does it sound like? Does it sound like a good thing?" he answered. His deep voice was not filled with malice or sarcasm. Actually, there was such a detachment to his tone that the tiniest section of him that could still freely think was shocked.

             Luckily he stifled that bothersome voice in his mind that was screaming out for Sam to save him rather quickly, and Death stepped forward. "Even if I remove Dean from the playing field," he said in his cold, clipped accent, "we're still left with you. Loyal, dogged, heartbroken Sam, who, I suspect, will never rest until she sets her husband free..." He walked around Dean and stood between the Winchesters like a barrier, a thin but impenetrable force that would never allow her to pass. With every step he took toward Sam, she moved slightly backward, recoiling from the dead look in his eye and unfeeling certainty in his tone. He finally stopped when he was literally right in front of her face, still speaking in the way that he did: harshly, yet quietly. Unthreateningly calm, yet terrifyingly sure.

             "... Will never rest until her husband is free of the Mark, which simply cannot happen, lest the Darkness be set free." His gray, lifeless eyes bored into hers, and he added nonchalantly, "Then there was that time you stood me up."

             A new Grand Canyon-esque crack deepening in her heart, Sam moved away from Death and carefully strode toward Dean. Her hands were trembling as she whispered, "You traded my life." Dean's face did not change, and Sam hoped she had imagined the tiny flicker behind his green eyes. Like a switch had been turned off, leaving them dark and cold and an abyss of the unknown. "I'm willing to live with this thing forever," he told her, sounding as if it were a rehearsed monologue, and he touched his arm where the Mark was, "as long as I know that I and it will never hurt another living thing."

             "This isn't you," she responded incredulously, her terror nearly reaching the point of hysteria-induced laughter. "This doesn't make any _sense!_ "

             "No, it makes perfect sense, if you stop thinking of yourself for one damn minute!" he shouted, his voice rising with every word. Sam stared at him, stuck between screaming, crying, and shaking him by the shoulders to wake him up. Her husband was right here, standing in front of her, but the Dean she had married - the hotheaded and slightly irrational but kind, brave, selfless Dean she'd known her entire life - was gone. There wasn't even the smallest glimmer of the remnant of any love he had felt for her. It was like he was talking to a stranger, condemning her to die without batting an eyelash. Whoever this man was, he was not Dean. He looked like Dean, talked like Dean, and sounded like Dean, but he was not him. Sam was sure of it now.

             "It's for the greater good," said Death unexpectedly. "Once you consider that, this makes all the sense in the world."

             Sam still did not remove her eyes from her husband's face. The only other time when he had willingly, even eagerly, set her up to die was when he was a demon. She mused subconsciously that it'd be far less painful if he would just kill her and get it over with.

             As if he heard her thought, Dean's eyes zigzagged away from hers, and he took a few steps to the right. "Remember when we were in that church," he said randomly, holding a finger to his chin, "making Crowley human, about to close the Gates of Hell? Well, you sure as hell were ready to die for the greater good then."

             "Yes, and Dean, you pulled me back," she answered back shakily. Her heart lurched with every cutting word he spoke.

             It only made it worse with the next statement.

             "And I was wrong." He turned to look at her squarely, his expression earnest. Or at least, feigning it. "You were right. You knew that this world would be better without us in it."

             "Whoa, whoa, whoa," she said quickly, her stomach dropping, and she held up a hand. "Wait a second. You're twisting my words here, Dean."

             "Why? Because we - we track evil and kill it? 'The family business?' Is that it? Look at the tape, Sam. Evil tracks _us_." He seemed to be regaining a bit of his fire, his passion, because his face scrunched up and his cheeks paled ever so slightly. "And it nukes everything in our vicinity—our family, our friends. It's time we put a proper name to what we really are, and deal with it."

             It took Sam a moment to understand what he was saying, but as soon as she got it, everything around her felt cold. The room's temperature dropped at least ten degrees, and the light outside the windows looked exponentially dimmer. Goosebumps arose on her skin at the conviction with which he spoke. This was not entirely the Mark talking. Dean had a hand in this idea, as well.

             She sucked in a deep breath and said, "Wait a second. _We are not evil_." Dean looked very close to scoffing, so she reached out and touched his arm tenderly. He didn't so much as twitch away. Just stood there, indifferent. In the back of her mind she noticed a bandana wrapped around his left palm, probably from where he had drawn blood to call Death. She continued, "Listen to me. We are far from perfect, but we are _good_. That thing on your arm is evil, but not you, and not me."

             Dean pulled back from her touch, pacing away and then back to her as he talked. "I let Rudy die," he said bluntly, referring to their long-time hunter friend who had been murdered by a vampire right before Dean's eyes. "How was that not evil?"

             He paused, looking at her deeply. "I know what I am, Sam. But who were you when you... when you drove that man to sell his soul?" Sam stiffened as she remembered Lester, the distressed man she'd used as a pawn to find Dean while he was a demon. "Or when you bullied Charlie into getting herself killed? And to what end? A-a good end? A _just_ end? To remove the Mark, no matter the consequences? Sam, how is _that_ not evil?" He waited for a second, as if she had the strength to reply. "I have this thing on my arm, and you're willing to let the Darkness into the world!"

             Her fervor returning like a flash of lightning, Sam shot back, "You were also willing to summon Death to make sure you could never do any more harm. And you summoned me because you knew" - Dean smirked and looked away from her to Death, who was growing impatient - "that I would do anything to protect you. That's not _evil_ , Dean. That is not an evil man." Sam's tone sounded laced with desperation and feeling, and she hoped that he could feel how she ached for him. How she meant every word she said. "That is a good man, crying to be heard, searching for... for some other way."

             Dean looked down at his feet, shaking his head imperceptibly. "No, there is no other way, Sam. I'm sorry." He looked back up at her, but she did not see true sadness in his expression. She did not see empathy, or sincerity, or regret, or anything that he would have normally shown when he apologized. All she saw in his eyes was a smug sureness, and that filled her with such a rage that she felt she would burst into flames. It fueled her blood so that it was boiling in her veins. So she did the only thing that crossed her mind: she punched her husband right in the jaw, as hard as she could.

             Dean staggered backward, a red mark appearing almost instantly. Sam thought she'd never hit so hard in her life, but there was too much adrenaline coursing through her body for her knuckles to hurt. Dean rubbed his jaw and looked back at her, not with anger, but with pity. "Good," he said with the air of a psychologist who had just gotten his patient to disclose a secret. He unwound the bandana from his hand and discarded it on the ground, flexing his fingers.

             "Fight."

             He punched her in the cheek, causing her to stumble and nearly fall with the amount of force. Pain blossomed on her face, but she did not back down from him. Something inside of her had broken, whether it was due to her impending death, or the fact that she had lost Dean yet again, and this time she couldn't get him back, she wasn't sure. But if she was to die, then she would do it fighting with every fiber of her being.

             She swung back and her fist connected with the side of Dean's head. The dull thud of bone on flesh made her stomach churn as he retaliated by grabbing her roughly and yanking her to the side. Sam hit him with blow after blow, each of them landing where she wanted, but nothing seemed to slow him down. His movements became more violent, vicious, cruel. All the pent up anger that he had been suppressing for the past few months was flowing out of his fists and inflicting pain on his wife.

            Sam eventually had to stop punching back to shield herself from his strong hands, holding her arms over her face as cuts started bleeding around her nose and mouth. Then she quickly switched her defense to covering her stomach, praying to the God that had long since disappeared that Dean would not hit here there, of all places. Dean threw her to the floor, and the unfinished wood scraped her cheekbone, opening another wound. She tried to get up and defend herself, but Dean brutally punched her in the head and she fell back down. A grunt escaped her before she hoarsely called out, "Okay, that's enough!" Dean paused, looking annoyed. When he reared back his foot, apparently to kick her, she whispered, panic sending a shock through her body, "Hey, that's enough."

            Perhaps it was the brokenness in her voice, or the blood trickling down her face, or the way that she flinched when he moved. Perhaps it was the dead silence that the world seemed to have been enveloped in. It could've been a number of things that made Dean stop, but he did it, and that was the most important thing to Sam. She swallowed hard, tasting the metallic, rusty blood in her mouth, and tilted her head to the side so he could see her eyes.

            "You will never, _ever_ hear me say that you - the real you - is anything but good."

            Dean rolled his eyes, looking toward Death, but Sam saw what was in his steely, beautiful greens. A flash of remorse. Just a flash, a passing gust of wind, a small fleck in the sand, but it was there. She knew it. Spitting out a gob of blood, she cleared her throat, her body aching everywhere, even in the places he didn't touch. Her hand rested on her abdomen protectively, touching the innocent growing thing that lay within. She wanted to sink into the floor and disappear, to run and hide, but the thought was gone just as fast as it'd formed in her mind. She could never leave Dean, not when he was like this. Not ever.

            When he turned back, she looked up at him, shifting onto her knees. Her eyes stung with the tears that she fought not to let fall. She coughed once, her throat raw for some reason, and when she spoke, her voice was soft. "But you're right," she breathed. "Before you hurt... anyone else... you have to be stopped at any cost. I understand."

            Her voice cracked up an octave on the last word, because truly, she didn't understand. She would never understand. She didn't get how he thought this was the only solution. She didn't get why the Winchesters had to be wiped from the planet before things could go back to normal.  She did not understand why she and Dean could not be happy and free together, like he said they would be. She did not understand why they never got to take that beachside vacation he promised, with their toes in the sand - _"And maybe some, y'know, littler toes, too."_ Which was his way of ever so cleverly suggesting that they try for a child during that vacation. (Little did he know that that plan was already enacted and in motion). Sam would never understand why they could not simply be "the Winchesters": the normal, protective, loving Winchesters, one lawyer and one mechanic, with a kid or two that always knew how much they were loved.

            Sam didn't know she had started crying until she tried to take a deep breath. Her breathing was shallow and quick, tears streaming down her face and cutting clean tracks in the bloodstains. She sniffed once, collecting herself best she could, and sighed heavily. "Do it," she told her husband, and her tone was hard and strong. The exact opposite of what she felt.

            Death walked toward Dean and handed him a scythe that reached well above his shoulder, which he seemed to have conjured from thin air. "Please," he said to Dean. "Do me the honor." Dean took hold of the weapon. Sam could see him, as he was turned halfway, so she watched as the emotions passed over his face. First it was confusion. Then he looked scared. Then his expression became calmed with resign, and he faced her full-on. "Close your eyes," he told her quietly. Sam's heart dropped to her knees but she did not move. "Sammy, close your eyes," Dean repeated, this time more gently.

            Sam hesitated at the affectionate nickname, and it took all the strength she had left to keep herself from dissolving. Was this just another ploy to falsely gain her trust? Or was the real Dean still in there somewhere? She wished he would hug her tight and fight against Death's wishes, defy the Horseman because he could never kill the woman he loved. She wished more than anything that times were simpler, like they were when he first came to find her at Stanford. What if time could be reversed and they could go back to the beginning? Would Sam resolve to do it all differently? Would anything change? And would any of it alter where they were now, at this moment? Sam didn't know, and she was not sure if she wanted to. Because no matter how frightened or sad she was, no matter how many cruel words were exchanged between the two, no matter how many fights and near-misses and near-deaths (and real deaths) they'd experienced, they had done almost all of it together. As a team. As a family. And Sam realized now that she wouldn't trade their love, the journey of their lives, or their marriage, no matter how painful it all had been, for all the time in the world.

             Just as she began to lower her head and accept her fate, she suddenly remembered why her pocket felt full, and looked back up and said, sniffling, "Wait."

            Quiveringly, she reached into her inner jacket pocket and pulled out three photographs, two of which were old and Polaroid. One showed a two-year-old Dean and their mother, Mary, grinning happily at the camera. The second was of both Winchester children when they were young, Sam a mere five months and Dean nearing age five. They were being cradled by Mary, John smiling lovingly at the three of them over his wife's shoulder. The third photo was the newest and clearest. It was a snapshot of Sam and Dean's wedding, taken inside the small chapel by the hired photographer. Sam was wearing a brilliantly white dress, Dean in a Rent-A-Tux. The ceremony was rushed by the lowlife priest because some richer couple was coming in a few minutes later. There had been no planning behind this, other than Dean's proposal three months before. But none of that was obvious by just the picture. Quite the contrary, just from the photo, one would think that they were the most blissful pair on the face of the earth. It captured them mid-kiss, just a mere inch apart, Sam's smile full of love and happiness. Dean's eyes were tender and crinkled at the sides. Sam had found this picture underneath his pillow when he was a demon and far away from her. And she had never put it back, because it gave her something soothing to hold onto while he was gone.

            Presently, she fanned all three photos out on the dusty floor so that he could see them clearly. "Take these," she said quietly. "And one day, when you find your way back... Let these be your guide. And they can help you remember what it was to be good." Sam then did something that she had never done, not once. She touched the engagement and wedding rings on her finger, and her eyes fell on the promise ring on the other hand. She'd kept wearing it after his proposal instead of packing it away somewhere, because they had sworn to one another that they'd save it to act as a purity ring for their daughter.  (Sam knew Dean was always so intent on having a daughter he could pamper and treat like a princess, even if he never outright told this to her.) Until then, Sam was to wear it so that even when they fought, she could look at the promise ring and remember just how long they had waited for each other. Now, she felt an overwhelming sadness wash over her as she slipped her engagement ring off for the first time since he gave it to her, followed closely by her wedding ring. There were two pale stripes in her skin from the lack of sunlight those parts had received, and the skin was clammy and unwilling to relinquish the rings, but Sam removed them anyhow. With her right hand she reached out and brushed her fingertips over Dean's. He understood what she wanted him to do, and he held out his hand. Gently, Sam pressed the two rings into his palm and closed his fingers over them, concealing them from her view.

            "What it was to love," she finished weakly. "I love you, Dean. I will always love you." This addition came unwarranted and unexpected to Sam as she met her husband's eye. His face was contorted with hesitation, and she could've sworn that his eyes looked a bit watery. The hand that held her rings fell back to his side as his own wedding band glinted in the dim light. His eyes found their way to the pictures on the floor, soaking in every detail about them.

            Death, reminding them of his presence, interjected with his forceful calmness, "It is for your family you must proceed, Dean. To be what you are, to become what you've become, is a stain on their memory." There was a pause in which Dean perused the photos again, emotion shining in his eyes. " _Do it_ ," Death commanded, "or I will."

            Sam could now see what photo Dean's eyes were focused on. It was the one of their wedding day, of their happiness and excitement and love. When he looked back at her, anguish painted his features, and that made it all the harder for her to convince herself that this was all the Mark's doing. If Dean could feel, then he was still in there. They stared at each other intently for a moment, a lifetime of memories and arguments and laughter and tears and hugs and _life_ passing between them in the silence that followed the Horseman's demand. Then Sam nodded reassuringly, giving her husband the permission to destroy her with the ancient weapon he held. She was thankful that nothing was being spoken verbally, because the memory of years upon years of his voice that was playing on a looping record in her head was almost too much to bear.

            Then Dean said the only words that she had never expected to hear.

            "Forgive me."

            One last tear fell from her eye as she nodded again, but she doubted very seriously if he could tell she moved at all. He pulled the scythe back, his posture mere seconds away from swinging it into her form, and Sam squeezed her eyes shut tightly. _I love you, Dean. I love you, Dean. I love you, Dean._

            The sound of the scythe slicing through the air was like a gunshot, but it didn't end with immeasurable pain. It was stunted by the thud of sharp metal in fabric, and Sam's eyes flew open.

            The weapon was sticking out of Death's side, and the old man was staring at Dean, wide-eyed. Then he began to turn an ashen gray color, and his form became cracked, like stone. The sound of crunching sand filled the silence, and Sam watched, horror-struck, as Death himself crumbled before her very eyes. The Horseman disintegrated into nothing but ash and dust, the scythe disappearing along with him.

            Dean stumbled backward slightly, and then looked down at Sam. Both of their faces shone with shock. After a beat, Dean extended his hand down to her and helped get to her feat. She teetered a bit, but he kept her steady. "Are you okay?" he asked seriously, regret and sorrow tinging his tone. Sam inwardly assessed her wounds. It did not feel as though she had any broken bones; at worst, there were a few bruised ribs. She breathed out a sigh. "I'll live," she answered. Then she peered at him closely, the space between them small but feeling increasingly distant. "You?"

            He breathed. "Fantastic." His Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed hard, the rush of adrenaline lighting up his green irises. "I think I just killed Death." His gaze snapped back to her almost immediately after that sentence, maybe because she made a weak attempt at a laugh. Dean took in her scratches and bruised and bloodied face, and his own paled a good deal. She watched his eyes fill with tears faster than she'd ever seen before as he said tremulously, "Sammy, I... I..."

            She shook her head, touching his jaw. "I'm so sorry, Sam," he whispered. His thumb brushed over the scrape on her cheekbone, then gently skimmed across her swollen bottom lip. "I am so, so sorry." Without a word Sam pulled him to her and wrapped her arms as tightly around him as she could, letting a small sob out into his shoulder. His fingers dug into her back desperately, like he wanted to make sure she wasn't going to disappear, too.

            Then, he jumped back, staring at the ceiling as a loud shrieking sound echoed in the empty restaurant. He glanced at his wife, unsure. "That sound right to you?" he asked. The second the last word left his mouth, an electric blue lightning bolt crashed through the ceiling and struck Dean's forearm, precisely where the Mark was located. Only, it did not dissipate when it struck. It stayed put, centralizing on him. His whole arm glowed an ember-like red, and his skin crackled as the Mark appeared to shrivel and burn up like a piece of paper. Finally, the lightning retracted, and Dean shouted in pain, falling back against the stage. He stared at his arm for a long time before he had the courage to meet his wife's gaze. She took a step forward and saw for herself.

            The Mark of Cain was gone.

            As they were hastily leaving the restaurant a few minutes later, Sam said, "This is good. Dean, this is good. Th-the Mark is off you. Nothing crazy happened. You got your Baby back - well, _both_ your babes," she added, smirking and pointing at herself with the Impala's key. Dean smiled at her with a very pure, concentrated love, one that made Sam's heart do a backflip, before squinting out at the Impala a few feet away. "Yeah," he said sarcastically, unbelievingly. "Yeah, I'm sure everything's perfectly fine."

            The moment they stepped off of the porch of the restaurant, a monumental crackling sound seemed to come from the sky. Simultaneously the Winchesters looked up into what Sam expected to be its clear blueness. What she saw, however, was unnerving: the sky was glowing orange, like the sort of color that a desktop computer's power button takes on when it's in sleep mode. Vivid and unnatural. Lightning struck the ground several feet in front of the pair, then intensified and began taking ground everywhere around them, hitting at random intervals.

            "What did Death call this?" Sam inquired of her husband. Dean, his eyes upward toward the sky, responded, "The Darkness."

            As if it wanted its say in the conversation, the ground rumbled. It was not like an earthquake, which felt more like a tilt of the surface. No, this was a boom that was shaking the Earth from its core. Like this were not enough, black smoke projectiles began to erupt from the spots where the lightning struck. Slowly, deliberately, they converged on one spot into a huge rolling cloud of infinite, impenetrable smoke. Sam and Dean stood, stunned, as the cloud started to gravitate towards them.

            "Get in the car," Dean told his wife. They sprinted toward the Impala in sync and yanked its doors open. Dean shoved the key into the ignition, the car's roar of life overshadowed by the terrible roll of thunder-like noise coming from the inexplicable smoke. Frantically Dean thrust the gearshift into reverse and backed the car with an urgency that Sam had not seen in him in a long time. She watched warily as the Darkness advanced with increasing rapidity. The car jostled and halted, and Sam realized by the sound the tires were making that they were trapped in a hole of some sort. By the time she looked back at the Darkness, it was less than five hundred feet away. She tapped Dean's arm and pointed. "Dean," she said falteringly.

             He grabbed her hand, entwining their fingers firmly, and looked at her. The intensity in his eyes was the opposite of scary, which is what it should have been. Sam felt reassured by this show of emotion, and his hand in hers. She pressed herself as close to him as she could as Dean yelled over the noise, "Hold on, Sammy."

            The cloud encased the car, and she screamed her husband's name in terror, and then everything was black.

            The world had a new threat now. One that it had never seen before. One that was only known to God, not His angels or any of His other creations. And it had returned.

            _The Darkness had returned._


	38. Lying (To Herself) Is The Most Fun A Girl Can Have

Castiel noticed first, despite it all. The spell Rowena had placed on him had taken the greatest of tolls on his mind and his heart, so much so that he was terrified to even leave the bunker. He just sat in there and binge-watched Netflix, per Sam's request. The Winchesters wanted him to get well more than they wanted him to be beside them as they fought the Darkness, and that was a lot.

Dean had met the Darkness, face-to-face, mere moments after he set it free. He told Sam all about it. The Darkness was a woman, and she was dark-haired, dark-eyed, beautiful, mysterious, and curious about Earth. On her collarbone was the Mark of Cain, in the form of a birthmark or tattoo embedded in her skin. She told Dean that they were bound: that they could not hurt one another, no matter how hard they tried.

She saved Sam and Dean from her infectious cloud of disease that she sent to all neighboring towns. It reached anyone who was out in the open and turned them into snarling, bloodthirsty zombies, much like the _Croatoan_ virus that Sam and Dean had encountered so many years ago. People either slaughtered each other, or dropped dead after a few hours.

As the Winchesters started back to the bunker, unaware of what had been released, they met a deputy ranger who was blood-soaked and terrified. Apparently she had fought off a huge group of road workers when they went rogue. She had had a gash in her side, though, so Sam and Dean drove her to a nearby hospital to get her some help. When they arrived, however, it was practically deserted and littered with dead bodies and blood. One of the only living people was a man that Sam found hiding from the zombies in a supply closet with his newborn baby girl. His wife had died during childbirth.

Sam learned very quickly that if the blood of an infected person found its way into a healthy human's system, the latter would become rabid, as well. The now single father Mike had said quite plainly that when he turned - because he knew he had the virus in him - that he wanted to be killed. When he felt himself going dark, he handed the baby to Sam and said, "Her name is Amara." Within a few minutes, he was dead.

After protecting the baby by giving her to Dean as he took Amara and the deputy, Jenna, to safety, Sam had worked furiously inside the hospital to find a cure. She hid from the infected citizens and tried to ward off their attacks, but soon, she found herself having one of their blood-covered hands smeared across her mouth. When the others caught a whiff of the virus, they backed off and let her be. She prayed to God in pure desperation and fear, clutching her stomach the whole time, and was bombarded by a vision of metal and absolute pain. She had screamed about not knowing what that meant to no one, but directly afterward, someone could be heard singing down the hall. " _Oh, Death..._ " Sam had stared as a beautiful black woman strode toward her, saying she was a reaper and that the world order was in chaos because of her and Dean. She told Sam that there was no more returning from death anymore, that when they died, they were dead forever. She also said that the Winchesters would neither go to Heaven nor Hell when they finally passed, because both instances were far too kind considering the damage they had done in life.

Sam, with terror and paranoia coursing through her the whole time, managed to cure herself by lighting holy oil on fire and placing the infected veins in her arm over the flame. It burned the sickness out, since the holy oil was of God and the Darkness's curse was the opposite. She then used that idea to cure the next round of zombielike teens who burst through the hospital doors.

Meanwhile, Dean had taken Jenna and Amara to Jenna's grandmother's house because Jenna offered to care for the baby from now on. "You're gonna help each other," Dean had told her. But after dropping her off and heading back toward the hospital, Dean had received a call that Amara was moving things with her mind. When he got there, he saw that Jenna's grandmother had called a priest - Crowley. After a short angry rant and some threats, Dean went to go check on the child in her nursery. He noticed something on her chest. A little mark, like a number seven with two comma-like tics next to it. The Mark. That was when the realization hit him like a truck: Amara was the Darkness.

In the end, Amara ended up sucking out Jenna's soul, Jenna killed her grandmother and then was killed, and the baby grew into a seven-or-eight-year-old girl in the blink of an eye. She walked out of the house and slipped away from Dean and Crowley. Dean knew then that the Darkness was a living, breathing problem, and he had no idea how to stop her.

As the weeks went by and Sam and Dean attempted to solve menial cases here and there, Crowley found Amara and persuaded her to live with him so he could teach her all about Earth. She consumed the souls of his demon henchmen and became a strikingly beautiful preteen girl, still absorbing as much information as she could. He tried, in vain, to keep her under control, to appeal to her ego, but she was far smarter than him. Amara was becoming stronger, too, and nothing could stop her.

That was the biggest of their problems, but certainly not the only one.

Castiel had always been a little more perceptive than either Winchester gave him credit for. After all, he was the one who picked up on Sam and Dean's love before they themselves really figured it out. When the Mark had become too much for Dean to control after Charlie died and he'd left Sam alone and heartbroken, she had felt something strange. Stranger than usual. She and Castiel were finally capable of being alone together without either of them doing something they would regret, and she should have been content with that aspect, at least. She was used to Dean storming out because of the Mark, but he had not disappeared for more than a few hours before that time. She had been worried. That wasn't the strange thing she felt, though.

She had remembered taking a pregnancy test about four months prior to Charlie's horrible death. It was sort of just for insurance, because she knew it could not be true. She hadn't read the package, so when the two minutes was up and a pair of skinny parallel lines appeared on the stick, she had figured that meant "not pregnant" and went on with her life, chalking up that morning's queasy stomach to some form of the flu. A couple months after that, she started feeling weird again. Started craving things she had never had a taste for beforehand. And her stomach had gotten pudgier by just a smidgen. Sam feared the worst, but told no one. Not Castiel, and _certainly_ not Dean. After all, he was cursed by the Mark of Cain and they were trapped running into dead-end after dead-end looking for a cure. How could he handle being told that she thought she was pregnant? Sam had figured it was better to ignore it for as long as she could. When Dean disappeared, though, and Castiel and Sam spent all their time together, it was a different story. Wasn't that how it went, though?

Castiel noticed it first. He always did.

"Are you going to tell him?" he'd said one day randomly. They had been sitting at the table, Sam engrossed in a book about Cain and eating some pickle chips (which she typically hated by themselves). She looked up to see the angel's bright, curious blue eyes staring at her. "Tell who what?" she inquired. Castiel's had expression changed to a very humanlike one, and it clearly read, _Are you serious?_ Sam loved this more-human Castiel, but sometimes she hated his insightfulness.

"Dean," he had said at last, the name causing goosebumps to rise on Sam's arms. "Are you going to tell Dean that you're pregnant?"

Sam's heart had stopped for a second. She pushed the book away, set the bowl of pickle chips on top of it, and leaned back in her chair. "Why would you think that?" she asked casually. The truth was, she was not being facetious; she genuinely was unsure of the truth. The angel had rolled his eyes. "Because you hate pickles," he noted simply. "Never mind the fact that I can hear another heartbeat even from across this table."

"You... you can hear it?"

"And hear its soul. Angel radio isn't just for angels, you know."

Sam had swallowed hard, ecstasy and horror battling over which would be the most pronounced emotion in her veins. "So it's true," she breathed. "I... I'm..." Castiel's eyes widened a little. "You didn't know?" he gasped. She shook her head, saying, "I wasn't sure. But if you can hear it... Oh my _God_ , Cas. What am I gonna do?" Sam had buried her face in her hands, then felt a soft touch on her shoulder after a moment. "It's okay," Castiel shushed her soothingly.

"Of all things... this is definitely _not_ what we need right now."

"I thought you two wanted a child?"

"Yeah, when we weren't being threatened by the apocalypse or hunted by Biblical and pre-Biblical terrors!" She shuddered at the thought of raising a child in this. Who knew how old Sam and Dean would live to be? They had been lucky to have made it this far. Sam couldn't bear the thought of abandoning her child like that, and she knew, with every fiber of her being, that this kid would, under no circumstances, grow up to be a hunter like its parents. She would never force another generation into this line of work - never. And she knew Dean would agree.

Dean.

"I can't tell him," she had answered the angel's previous question, lifting her head to look at him. "I can't. God knows what he'd do. And besides, I don't even know where he is. Why would he be happy if he can't even stand to be in the same building as me right now?"

Castiel had knelt down in front of her. "You know that's the Mark," he'd said sternly. "That isn't anything you've done. We all knew the Mark would end up controlling him, one day. I know, for a fact, that he did not mean a word he said after Charlie died." Sam shook her head. "Sam, Dean would never, _ever_ say that it should've been you," Castiel told her. "He'd completely destroy anyone who _would_ say that, and has on several occasions. This is the Mark, and it has been the Mark since he got it."

"I still can't tell him," she whispered. "Not till he's cured. Not till he's Dean again."

And here is where this story makes yet another circle. Dean and Sam were hunting again, doing routine jobs; Castiel was at the bunker, watching _The Wire_ on Netflix. It felt oddly normal, despite the Darkness being unleashed. After reminding Dean of the first half of the old family motto (" ** _Saving people_** _, hunting things - the family business_ ") and managing to get him on-board with a "no killing" rule, they found themselves researching weaknesses more than ways to destroy. Sam still kept her secret hidden - because that was what the Winchesters did best - and fought alongside her husband as if nothing should hamper her ability. It was like old times. It was nice.

When they returned home to the bunker after a particularly violent case, Dean went to go take a shower and Sam rushed into Castiel's room. He was wrapped in a scratchy-looking woolen blanket, the TV the only light in the room. The bed was unslept in, the curtains were drawn, and there was a thick layer of dust on everything but the remote. Sam wondered if he had moved at all since she last saw him. There were dark circles under his eyes, yet he brightened when he saw Sam as she closed his door behind her. He muted the television and stood on wobbly legs, hugging her tightly, like he feared she would evaporate. Sam didn't have the heart to tell him how bad he smelled.

"I'm glad you're alright," he said sincerely as he released her. "And Dean?" She pointed to the wall on her right, toward the direction of their room. "Shower," she provided. Castiel smiled. Sam took a deep breath and wiped her sweaty palms on her jeans. _This is gonna be awkward_ , she thought.

"Cas, can I ask you a favor?" she inquired. He nodded. "Of course." She glanced down at her abdomen - how Dean had not noticed the extra weight there, she would never know - and gulped. "I, uh, I got beat pretty bad the other day, and I wanted to... to see if you... ah, this is weird. Never mind."

Just as she turned to leave the room, her face burning, Castiel said, "You want me to check on it?" She sighed, facing him again. "Do you care?" The angel shook his head, looking as if he was amused at her insecurity about asking. "It'd be my honor," he joked. Sam rolled her eyes and stepped closer to him.

Castiel flattened both of his hands against Sam's stomach, closing his eyes and, Sam thought, holding his breath. His eyes twitched underneath his lids, and Sam started to feel something very warm in her abdomen. Like sunlight was beaming onto it. She let her own eyes slide shut as the sensation overtook her. Had her eyes been open, she would have seen Castiel's lids shoot upward, his irises wide with shock. She would have seen his pale face and the way he looked at her, his expression nothing short of terrified disbelief. But when she finally did look again, he appeared back to normal. "Everything's fine," he said calmly, encouragingly. "Perfectly healthy. About three more months until it's ready to be birthed."

Sam let out a breath of air. "Healthy?"

"Perfectly."

She threw her arms around the angel, relief flooding her veins. "Thanks, Cas," she whispered. "I'm telling Dean soon. I just hope he'll take it better than I'm expecting." Castiel nodded against her shoulder, but all he could think about was what he had just discovered.


	39. Things Are Shaping Up To Be Pretty Odd

Sam had everything planned out cleverly and felt very jittery and excited, but when Dean walked into the kitchen, she sort of lost steam. She couldn't even look at him as he sniffed the air curiously. "What's that in the oven?" he asked. She shrugged, her back turned. "Um, I'm not sure," she replied nonchalantly. After a beat she heard the metallic creak of the oven door being opened, and Dean's soft grunt. "Okay, what the..." She turned around, finally, faking being interested. Her husband held up a solitary hamburger bun, which was now crispy and golden brown.

"It's a bun," Dean said, uncomprehending and somewhat amused. The skin around his eyes crinkled in that adorable way as he half-smiled, and Sam's heart leapt up into her throat. It almost felt like her heart was bungee jumping. "I don't... Was Cas try'na cook again?" She giggled as Dean stared at the bread for a moment, then turned toward the oven to switch it off. "Just a bun in the ov - "

The bread fell from his grasp and _thumped_ dully to the tile floor. She could see Dean's shoulders tense as he very slowly faced her. His face was pale and his eyes were wide, and Sam's heart was hammering against her ribcage. "... Sam?" he choked out hoarsely. His gaze flicked down to her stomach, and she watched as something sparked impressively behind his steely greens. "... Sammy..." He strode around the island, his legs appearing shaky, but he only just barely made it to where he stood in front of her before he had to reach back and grab the counter for support. Every part of him was visibly trembling. Almost as if it was an instinct, Dean touched the place on his arm where the Mark used to be. He opened his mouth, probably just to say her name again, but she stepped closer and just looked at his eyes. That was enough. For both of them.

"How..." he croaked.

"Well, Dean, when a man and a woman love each other very much, they - "

"No, that's - no, shut up." It was said quickly, distractedly, as he scrubbed his hand over his face, and then a look of horror encased him. He glanced back up at his wife apologetically. "I'm sorry," he said. Sam shook her head, smiling in a soft sort of way. "I meant... how - _ah -_ how far... _along_... are you?"

Her throat felt tight all of the sudden, like it was lined with sandpaper. She knew she would start crying soon. "Just over five months," she managed to say. Tears sprung into her eyes with the effort it took, and more of them threatened to spill over the brim with the expression Dean wore. It was unnamable, almost: a mixture of everything a person can feel, all at one time. " _Five months_ ," he echoed. Other than that simple phrase, he seemed speechless. Sam couldn't tell what he was thinking, and that scared her even more. So she started talking.

"I'm sorry, Dean," she said, her words sounding like broken glass. "I didn't know right away because I'm stupid and don't know how to read a pregnancy test, and then you were gone and the Mark got worse and Cas kept telling me to tell you but I was afraid. And then the Darkness happened and I _still_ couldn't work up the nerve to tell you and this was the only way I knew how and I'm just _so sorry_ , Dean."

He was shaking his head, trying to let all of it sink in. "Cas knows?" he asked weakly. Sam felt her heartrate triple in speed. The absolute _last_ thing she needed was for Dean to think she trusted the angel with the information more than she trusted her husband. "Yeah, but I didn't tell him," she clarified. "He told me. Said he could hear its heart beating."

Dean just breathed for a long while, still holding tight to the counter. Sam was petrified, but she wasn't quite sure why. What was the worst he could do? Dean would never put the baby in danger; Sam had known him far too well and for far too long to even let that thought cross her mind. And she knew that this was not the most ideal time, but still... they had created something. Together. A _life_. Wasn't that spectacular? Didn't that excite him? She wanted to put her hands on the sides of his face and force him to look her in the eye, so maybe she could read what he was thinking, but at the moment, all she could do was stand there and wait for the worst. Maybe he'd suggest adoption. That was Sam's worst fear, right then. Having to give up the baby, _her_ baby. _Their_ baby.

"I'm sorry, Dean," she whispered. Her voice was like a breath of wind, though far less confident, and a teardrop slid down her cheek after finally breaking through the dam. Dean looked at her just as the tear dripped off her chin, his mouth open slightly. "Why?" he replied softly. "Why in the name of God are you apologizing to me?" He straightened his back and put both hands on each of her upper arms, squeezing gently. "Sam... did you really think I wouldn't be happy?" His voice was very quiet.

"You... you are? You're happy?"

Dean half scoffed, half laughed, his green eyes twinkling impossibly brightly. " 'Happy' doesn't even scratch the surface. Sam, I'm floating. I don't even care how stupid that sounds. I'm over the freakin' moon! I can't - I can't even put it into words. There's no explanation for how I'm feeling right now."

And he looked the part: everything about Dean seemed to be glowing. A beautiful grin was plastered on his worry-lined face, creating wrinkles in places even Sam hadn't seen before. His eyes were sparkling kind of wetly, like he was fighting tears of his own. Even the sweet little freckles that still dotted his cheeks seemed to be dancing. In all her life, Sam had never seen Dean look so happy.

"When I said I wanted this," he went on, trying to contain himself, "I meant it. The timeframe was just a rough outline. I would've _liked_ if we could have raised a kid when all this crap was over and done with, but honestly? I just... I want to be a dad. That's the simplest I can put it. I love you, and I want to be a dad." Something appeared to dawn on him as he said that, because his eyes zigzagged down to the floor and his mouth opened a little wider. "I'm... I'm going to be a _dad_."

Sam let out a tiny laugh, more tears flowing now, and wrapped her arms around her husband's neck as tightly as she could. He held her just as strongly, if not more so, for a second, then let up on his grip a little. "I don't want to squeeze too hard," he chuckled nervously into her shoulder. They hugged for another minute before Dean sprung backwards.

"Wait!" he exclaimed. "You've been beaten up. Sam, oh my God, why did you let me leave you alone with _monsters_?" Sam shook her head, breathing slowly. "I handled it!" she replied surely. "And Cas told me everything's fine." Dean's eyes wide, he rubbed his stubbly chin. "From now on, you're on strict no-combat orders," he said sternly. Sam beamed. "Yeah, right," she giggled.

"I'm serious, Sam. We've gotta protect this kid."

"So if I weren't pregnant, you'd let me get beaten to a pulp without a second thought?"

"I mean... when you put it that way, it sounds cruel."

Sam punched his chest lightly; he grabbed her wrist and pulled her toward him, pressing their lips together. She melted into the kiss and for a very brief moment, she forgot all about the Darkness, and the fact that they were in an underground bunker with an angel of God in the next room over. Right then, just for the amount of time it took for them to become breathless and come up for air, they were a normal couple, expecting a normal child. They were who Sam always dreamed they'd be, one day.

But then she pulled back, smiling at him, and saw the hammer Dean had almost killed her with hanging in a glass case on the wall, and she remembered that "normal" was a bit out of their reach.

Suddenly, Dean drew a sharp breath, and Sam furrowed her brow. "What?" He blinked a few times, apparently thinking hard. "It's just... this place is kinda musty for a kid... and there's _a lot_ of weapons... Plus, how are we ever gonna fit a crib into our room? We can't really put it in the next room over, 'cuz these walls are soundproof." He looked into her eyes and breathed slowly, and the apprehension seemed to seep out of him. Like just the calmness of her ever-changing eyes could reel him back into serenity.

That was one reason why Sam and Dean Winchester worked so well together. It was the main reason why Sam believed God had hand-picked them for one another, according to Castiel. When one was afraid, the other was sure. When one was angry, the other was (usually) levelheaded. When one was sad, the other was a ray of light that brightened them from the inside out. They were a carefully balanced scale, set just so one side was never heavier than the other. They were like two magnets because no matter how much something forced them to repel one another, they always fell back together in a way that was simply a natural law, a scientific fact, an observable truth.

So when Dean said, "We're gonna be okay, Sammy. It's gonna be all good," and pressed his forehead to his wife's, and they just stood there, breathing each other in, the stars weren't especially bright. No planets aligned to agree with their love. No birds chirped in the distance, and no brilliant sunset framed their silhouettes, because in all honesty, it probably was not going to be "all good," and they knew that. But they had each other, _still_ , and that was good enough.


	40. So You Should Hold My Hand

"A _midwife_?"

Sam shrugged. "Or a doula. Whichever you want to call her." Dean ran a hand through his hair with mouth wide open in both confusion and exasperation. Sam watched him carefully, caught somewhere between amusement and... well, nervousness. "Sam, why do you want a - "

"Don't even ask me that. You know why," his wife laughed. But when Dean seemed genuinely concerned, she felt her heart drop. "Dean... you don't _seriously_ think we can have a normal childbirth at a hospital, do you?"

"I mean, I thought we could."

Sam rubbed her eyes with one hand, the other positioned over her stomach. The baby - Sam made Castiel promise that he wouldn't tell them its gender - had about a month left before it was ready to come. Amara was still in the wind. There was a standstill on all sides of this mess and the Winchesters were caught in the middle of it, as per usual. So at the moment, all they could do was plan for something at least relatively _happy_. A little makeshift bassinet was set up next to their bed, crafted from a huge basket and the softest blankets they could find in the bunker. Dean had promised they would go out and look for a crib when the baby got a little bigger. But there was still the matter of _how_ it would come into this world, so Sam had researched home births online and found a midwife and her wife who lived two states over. They were very kind when Sam spoke to the pair of them on the phone, and she asked them to come and stay at the bunker until the baby was ready. Dean didn't know that they were already on their way, or that they would most likely be arriving any moment.

"Dean," she said gently, sitting down at the table in the library, "don't you remember who we are? 'Sam and Dean Winchester' don't exist. Dean died in a police shootout. Sam was killed some other way. I don't even remember how anymore. The point is, neither of us have usable medical records, and I don't want to have this baby under a false name. I want it to be _us_ , the real us. And we can't be the real us in a hospital."

As she spoke she reached out and grabbed her husband's fingers. She felt almost guilty that he didn't understand for some reason, though it was not necessarily her fault. And it wasn't like she did not want to have the baby in an actual hospital; truly, she would have felt better if she had been able to. But she knew it was entirely out of the question, if not literally then morally.

Nodding slowly, Dean sighed. "I get it," he conceded, voice low and slightly defeated. Then he gave a quirked smile. "Guess we'll never really be very normal, huh?" Sam breathed out a laugh. "Not entirely, no. Maybe we can get close, with some practice." Dean chuckled, taking a step toward her and kissing the top of her head. She leaned into him, relaxed into the fabric of his shirt, closed her eyes, and just listened. There was a quiet brush of skin on cotton as his thumb rubbed her shoulder. The steadiness of his breathing was like rolling waves. His chest rumbled deeply as he cleared his throat.

"So, uh, when's this happening, exactly? Because I have a feeling you already did it."

"You always were a perceptive one."

Dean groaned. "Sam, how do you even know if this chick is safe?" She pulled back and looked at up him. From below, the curve of his jaw was especially impressive. He hadn't shaved in a few days, so there was stubble lining it, as well. Sam smiled lovingly. "I talked to _them_ , her and her wife."

" _Two_ of them are coming?" he demanded.

"They work together and said they're a package deal. One can't work without the other. Sound familiar?" She gave him an overdramatically simpering look, and, surprisingly, he blushed. "What can I say?" she went on. "They're a sweet couple. I talked to them for a while on the phone. This is their main profession, and they're both certified and highly recommended. Their names are Xantha and Jessamy."

Dean seemed to repress a cringe. "Sounds kinda... flower power-y."

"Free your mind, man," Sam replied in a deeper voice than usual, half-closing her eyes and holding up two fingers to make a peace sign. Before he could say something snarky, she continued, "Listen, I already asked them to come. They should be here today, which is good, because, unfortunately, this little jerk" - She pointed at the bulge in her stomach - "didn't come with a timer. We need to be ready, Dean," she added gently, touching his hand. "There's a lot that we can do, just you and me, but this is one thing we _need_ help with. Okay?"

A beat of silence passed in which Dean sighed, rubbing his chin. "And besides," she joked after a moment, "since they're both attracted to women, I don't have to worry about someone hitting on you."

His head shot up at that, a twinkle in his lovely green eyes. "Um, sure, but they're both _attracted to women_ ," he retorted. "If either of them comes onto you, they're outta here. _Capisce_?"

"Sir, yes sir!" She saluted him, rolling her eyes playfully, and he swatted her hand away. His eyes crinkled at the sides as he grinned and pulled her to her feet. Sam got somewhat lost in his handsomeness, just like she used to when they were younger, not really registering it when he snaked his arms around her waist and held her close. It was only when her enlarged abdomen bumped into his flatter one that she shook her head a little, still locked on his eyes, and smiled.

Dean breathed slowly. "So this... this is really happening, isn't it?" he asked, sounding like he was worried someone would hear him. "Like... we're gonna be..." He trailed off and stared at the floor for a minute. Then Sam felt something press on the inside lining of her stomach; Dean's eyes grew to the size of dinner plates. "I broke it!" he said hoarsely. Sam laughed, a sound that made Dean's already racing heart quicken in speed, and grabbed onto his hands. She held them over where she'd felt the sensation and watched his face closely.

A second later, another gentle kick poked at her stomach. Dean's face both flooded with color and drained of it, somehow simultaneously, and Sam worried he might faint. The hands that were rested on her bump were trembling. Another tiny nudge. Then Dean's hands started to still. He did not raise his eyes from where his child was, inside his wife. His thumb softly caressed the spot where he had just felt it trying to get to him. A wobbly smile rose on his face like someone was pulling the corners upward with a string. When Sam could see his eyes, she noticed they were glossy.

"Yeah," she answered his question. Her voice was a whisper and she would not have been surprised if the word drowned in the emotions she felt before it could gain enough confidence to be heard. "It's happening."

There were times when Dean looked happy. Lots of them. Well, not _lots_. There were enough for her to be able to count and not lose track. But there were different kinds of "happy," for Dean. He could be triumphantly happy, after winning the argument or killing the monster or saving the victim. He could be blissfully happy, after making his wife laugh or smile or spending the day _not_ fighting evil. He could be disbelievingly happy, like after Sam returned from Hell outwardly unscathed. He could be romantically happy, after cheesily flirting and getting away with it or being close to her and cuddling (even though he swore he wasn't a fan of doing that). But this was a new sort of happy, one that she'd never seen before, not even when he first found out she was pregnant. It was a happy that almost _didn't_ look happy, because there was so much emotion behind it. A happy that was wet yet sparkly, intense yet light as air, frightened yet hopeful, and burdened yet euphoric, impossibly mixed into one pair of light green irises.

_The happiness of a new father_ , she realized.

"It's happening," he echoed somewhat hollowly, like he was not all there. But Sam didn't mind. She was working on going missing inside his lovely eyes, or letting the warmth of his deep voice wrap around her until the world could not see her anymore. So when he hugged her with the tightest of holds, as if he was afraid she would shatter or evaporate, Sam let herself melt into him because _it was happening, finally._

And she started to think.

No matter how stupidly he behaved sometimes, and despite the glittering gold band on her finger that felt as natural as her skin now, Sam still could not fully believe that he loved her. Dean Winchester loved _her_ , of all people. A man like Dean could have had anyone he wanted- and she had thought for a long time that that was exactly what he did - but he chose her. _Well, I guess_ chose _isn't the right word to use_ , she thought, remembering what Castiel had said about them being matched up in Heaven. It was a little weird, too, thinking that they'd been planned to be together. Had their souls been created specifically to be the second half of the other? Or had God peered at the two of them, after they had been formed in Heaven, and realized that only together were they the ones He could use for His work? However it happened, she supposed it didn't necessarily matter. Now was not the time for existentiality. Now was the time to look at her husband, whom she loved more than she thought humanly possible, and figured that this time, they would fight the bad things together, as opposed to separately. This time they were in it as one, for a change. And Sam figured that, because of that, this time, they'd win.

Her cellphone rang out shrilly in the spacious bunker, crushing the moment into a fine powder. Dean jolted back, startled, then looked sheepish when his wife giggled. Sam reached for her phone and pressed the _Talk_ button, then hit _Speaker_.

"Hi, Mrs. Winchester?" a female voice said uncertainly on the other line. Sam's heart fluttered. She didn't think she'd ever been called that before. She rather liked the sound of it. And by the half smile on Dean's face, she knew he did too. "This is Jessamy. We're where you told us to meet you, but it kinda looks like a big pile of dirt."

"No, that's probably it," Sam laughed. "I'll be out in just a minute to let you in."

"Okay. Oh, and uh, just one question." Jessamy's melodic voice paused for a second. "You guys aren't, like... mole people, are you?"

Dean shot her a look that quite clearly conveyed what he was thinking. Sam shrugged and looked at the phone. " _Mole people_?" she repeated incredulously. "Mm-hmm," Jessamy replied. "Y'know, like, living under the Earth, don't go outside much, kind of antisocial except for with who already lives there."

Sam thought for a moment. "Well, I guess if that's the criteria, I'd say we are." Dean's mouth opened to object, but an excited second woman cut him off. "I knew it!" shouted whom Sam supposed was Xantha. "I told you, Jess, I told you!" Jessamy's disembodied voice just laughed. "I'll be up in a sec," Sam told the pair.

"Alrighty! See you then!" There was a quiet _click_ , and Sam put her phone back in her pocket. Dean was rubbing his forehead, shaking his head disapprovingly. "Mole people, Sammy?" he said. "Why would you agree to that?"

"You've gotta admit. We meet the standards."

"We're not freaks, though!"

Sam raised her eyebrows challengingly. "Oh, sorry, you're right," she replied sarcastically. "We're just a normal married couple that grew up thinking we were related while also hunting mythological monsters, with a best friend who's a fallen angel from Heaven who replaced God for a little while, and who unleashed both the Biblical Apocalypse _and_ the Darkness. Totally not freaks."

"Okay, _okay_. I get it."

Winking with a smirk on her lips, Sam hobbled over to the stairs and started up toward the heavy metal door. The steps were a lot more difficult to climb than she remembered, though. She hadn't been up them in a while because Dean had put her on strict a "no hunting" regimen. Now it was sort of like she had strapped the world's largest watermelon to her stomach, and she'd been challenged to walk uphill without falling backward. Even though, physically, there wasn't that big of a bump, it was hard. Within a few seconds she was out of breath and her back hurt. When she saw she was only about halfway up the staircase, she heaved a sigh, then heard Dean chuckle quietly. "How're ya doin', honey?" he said. Sam shot him a look. "Just peachy."

It felt like forty years had passed before she finally made it to the top of the metal steps. She took a moment to lean on the rail and breathe, and then turned the wheel on the door to face the little upward slope into sunshine. The baby made a couple more awkward movements inside her stomach, squirming around like it had a cramp. Sam smiled to herself as she braved another workout. Luckily, this climb was shorter and less intense, so she made it to the mouth of the opening without feeling like she was going to pass out, or cry.

The first thing she saw was an old, beat-up, powder-blue Volkswagen bug. A couple cartoonish, Mystery Van-esque flowers had been plastered on the doors. Inside sat a pair of women, and when they saw the out-of-breath Sam approaching, they each opened their doors. One of them was shorter than the other by a good six inches, but the taller seemed more physically fit. Sam could see that they were each at least four or five years younger than she was. The tallest's hair was wispy, reaching only to the tips of her ears, and a soft gray color. It looked like liquid silver as it shone in the sunlight. The tint of her skin reminded Sam of melted caramel. The second woman had olive-hued skin, blemish-free and nearly perfect, save for a beauty mark at the corner of her mouth. Fiery red locks fell to her shoulders in natural-looking ringlets. They were both dressed in flowy, flowery tanks and jeans, with matching gold bands on corresponding fingers. As they got closer, Sam noticed that they also had the same shade of brown in their irises.

"Oh, my," said the shorter of the two, her eyes going wide at the sight of the Winchester. "You are just... oh, you're beautiful. The energy around you is so pure. Almost angelic."

Sam both cringed and brightened internally at the comparison. "You're too kind," she giggled. The tall girl cast a look to the other and said apologetically, "Sorry. My wife just gets a little... _spacy_ when meeting new people. I'm Jessamy, by the way," she added, extending a hand. Sam smiled as she shook it. "This is Xantha."

"Thank you both so much for coming on such short notice."

Jessamy tittered lightly, "It's no problem! We live for the excitement!" Then she squinted her eyes at Sam's stomach, making Sam feel the tiniest bit uncomfortable. "That's gonna be one skinny baby," she remarked, though not in a rude or condescending way. Actually she sounded quite happy. Sam glanced down at her own abdomen, a feather of worry seeding itself into her heart. Xantha put a hand on her arm as if she could sense what she was feeling. "That's not bad, honey. Really, it might make it a lot easier when it's time to give birth."

Sam shrugged. "If you say so."

"I do. Trust me, we've seen women with ten-pounders. They usually can't get outta bed for months. With your slight frame, a smaller child will be a big blessing."

Nodding, Sam smiled at the pair of them. "So," she said after a beat, "would you like to come down into our little hole?" The two women giggled, then agreed in unison. They turned and unloaded a few duffel bags from the VW Bug, and when they had everything collected, they looked at Sam expectantly. She started back the same way she came, careful of her footing on the downhill slope. At one point she felt so unsteady that she reached out and put a hand on the wall to her right just to keep herself up. Jessamy and Xantha were too preoccupied with their luggage to notice, thankfully. When she got to the door, Sam took a breather for a moment. It creaked as she shoved it open.

"Dean," she called down into the bunker. Her voice echoed oddly around the room. Her husband sauntered into sight a second later, peering up at her form in the doorframe. A tiny crooked smile crept across his face. "Need help, darling?" he asked in an overly-sweet tone. Sam rolled her eyes, but sighed at the same time, which he knew was her saying, _Yes_. With a breathy chuckle he bounded up the steps two at a time and grabbed her hand. The women behind her stepped into the room, then, staring about them in something like awe. Dean glanced at Sam, who raised her eyebrows. She watched as Dean's face showed very clearly what he was deciding. First, it looked like, _I should say hi._ Then it was, _Maybe I should welcome them in?_ Lastly, he came to the conclusion of, _I'm gonna keep my mouth shut for now._

Xantha was the first to speak. "Wow," she breathed. "This place is... wow." She and Jessamy followed the Winchesters as Dean escorted his wife down the stairs, one of his hands gripping hers and the other holding her elbow to steady her. There was very little sound for a few moments, other than that of the duffle bags occasionally scraping against the steps. Sam drew a deep breath in through her nose when she finally reached the bottom of them, and Dean watched her carefully. The women got to the floor at the same time; a second passed in which everyone just looked at one another.

"You're pretty civilized for mole people," joked Jessamy at last, smiling lopsidedly. Sam chuckled. "And we've even got indoor plumbing," she said. Xantha whistled lowly under her breath, gazing around the combined library and sitting room. "Look at all these books," she mused. "I bet you two never get bored."

"You'd be surprised," inserted Dean with a wink at Sam, who gave him an amused look sideways. He then seemed to remember his manners and stepped toward the women, extending his hand to them. "I'm the husband," he introduced. Jessamy shook his hand, then Xantha, both speaking their own names in turn with a smile. "Nice to meet you, Mr. Winchester," said Jessamy. Dean cringed slightly. "Call me Dean," he told her, eyebrows raised and mouth quirked up at the side. They both nodded. Sam watched as Xantha wove her fingers through her red ringlets and shifted the bags she held.

"Here, I'll show you where you'll be sleeping," Sam said, gesturing to the hallway a few paces off. Without a word Dean reached forward and took one of the bags from each girl, and he was met with surprised yet grateful gazes. He followed Sam as she slowly made her way toward one of the spare rooms. It was in a totally different hall than hers and Dean's, and about three rooms down from Castiel's when he was there. They were not entirely sure _where_ he was at this particular moment in time, but they knew he would come back, because that's just what Castiel did. He always came back.

Sam pushed the door inward to reveal a sparsely-decorated bedroom, filled with two nightstands, a dresser, a couple of lamps, and a bed. This was one of the only rooms without a television in it. A door in the far left corner led into a private bathroom. It was relatively the same setup as all the other rooms, but this one simply had not been lived in yet.

Jessamy and Xantha entered the room and put the bags on the end of the bed, motioning Dean to do the same. He and his wife stood side-by-side in front of the door as the women situated their things. After it was all piled up, Jessamy placed her hands on her hips and said, "Well, now that we've got that outta the way, we have a couple of questions for you, Mrs. Winchester."

"Sam," she corrected sweetly. Jessamy smiled. "Alrighty, Sam. First thing's first. How far along are you?" Dean answered, though Sam knew that he knew the question was not directed at him. "About eight months, give or take. We're thinking the due date is somewhere around the middle of November."

Xantha glanced at Sam's stomach indiscreetly, a wrinkle appearing between her orange eyebrows. Sweeping her silver-colored bangs away from her eyes, Jessamy continued, "Have you experienced any false alarms? Like, labor pains or false contractions?"

At once an incident a month in a half prior came to Sam's mind. She remembered quite clearly how the pain had nearly brought her to her knees, along with giving Castiel, who had been the only one home at the time, a heart attack. There had been a lot of screaming, some tears, and a remarkably panicked angel. He'd filled Dean in when Dean returned from the store later, detailing every second of the scare with a pale face that, admittedly, had amused Sam. Just a little.

Dean seemed to be remembering the same day, for he glanced at Sam with one eyebrow raised. "There's been one, yeah," she told Jessamy, smiling crookedly. "Happened in the middle of July."

"What did it feel like?"

"Equivalent to a two-ton man made of fire jackhammering the upper part of my uterus."

The midwives laughed, and Dean's ears turned deep red. Sam saw him press his lips together to repress his chuckling. "That's pretty normal," said Xantha, still giggling. "Doesn't sound fun, kinda graphic, but normal."

"Last question: have you had any actual professional checkups at all?"

Sam thought for a moment. She had not been to a clinic since before Dean came to find her at Stanford. Years and years. But did Castiel count as a professional? Technically, she supposed, he was not a doctor, but he was an _angel_. That was better. He would be able to tell if there was anything wrong with the baby much faster than a doctor, and he could heal it. Then again, they could not necessarily tell the women that they had been having their best friend, the fallen angel, check on the unborn child every once in a while.

"Not professional ones," she replied carefully after a beat. "But we have had checkups. A friend of ours isn't certified but he's better than anyone else we've seen." Dean, immediately understanding what she meant, nodded in agreement.

Xantha clapped her hands together. "Well then. I guess all there is to do now is make sure we keep you as healthy and calm as possible, and wait till it's time."

"Are you ladies hungry?" asked Dean, somewhat abruptly. Sam shook her head, chuckling at him. "'Cuz I know I am. How about you two get settled in and I'll go make dinner? I make the best burgers in the below-ground world, y'know," he added with a smirk. His wife rolled her eyes, though inwardly she agreed.

Jessamy smiled widely. "That sounds awesome. Thank you."

As the Winchesters left the room, closing the door behind them, Xantha sat down on the edge of the mattress. She rubbed her hands together restlessly before dropping them into her lap. Jessamy peered down at her. "What is it?" Xantha wordlessly shook her head, eyebrows furrowed. "X, c'mon," her wife pressed quietly, and she seated herself beside her. She covered her left hand with her own left, tracing small circles in her palm. The sound of their wedding bands scraping together was more like music than noise. "What's wrong?"

Xantha hesitated still yet, her eyes trained on her wife's hand. "I have a bad feeling, Jess," she said at last. Jessamy sighed in a small sort of way. "That happens sometimes. This is kind of a heavy atmosphere, and y - "

"No, I have a bad feeling about that kid."

"... What kind of bad feeling?"

The red-haired woman looked at her wife, swallowing hard. "Worse than any bad feeling I've ever gotten before."


	41. I'm Willing To Wait For It

Sam leaned against the counter and she watched Dean roll raw hamburger into patties. All around him on the surface were lettuce leaves, fresh tomato slices, cheese singles, and a few jars of condiments and toppings. The clutter didn't seem to distract him, though. His big hands worked quickly and methodically; she really believed that cooking was one of his most impressive talents. He could make anything he wanted, no recipe on hand, and nine times out of ten it would come out smelling and tasting wonderful. Which was really good, considering Sam could not even manage boiling a pot of water most times without burning something. When Dean turned away to put a couple patties on the skillet he had on the stove, she reached over and plucked a miniature pickle from the open jar. It crunched loudly, and he eyed her. "You know my rule," he chastised as he moved around the edge of the counter to gather up a few stray ingredients.

She rolled her eyes. "No eating the creation before it's complete," she recited, monotone. He smiled and planted the tiniest of kisses on the tip of her nose. "Good girl. Will you get plates out for me?" Sam nodded and walked over to a cabinet that hung over the sink. Being so tall she could reach the inside top shelf easily, whereas Dean typically had to stand on his tiptoes. She got out five crème-colored ceramic plates, one for each of the four people present and one for the missing angel, should he decide to show up in time to eat. They always did this, every night. Always set a place for Castiel at the table, just in case.

Suddenly a stab of pain shot through Sam's stomach, and she swallowed a squeal before it burst out. She clamped her eyes shut tightly, gripping the plates hard, as the shock turned into a dull throb, increasing in intensity at uneven intervals. Sam attempted to count the seconds between each jolt, but there was no pattern. Some pauses lasted on the upside of eight seconds, and some only lasted two or three. She knew that if she stood there too long, Dean would begin to worry, so she forced herself to move back toward her spot at the edge of the counter. Placating her inner voice of terror, she told herself that she could not possibly be going into labor, for the contractions were not right and there was too much time left for the baby to be ready.

" _Sam_. Earth to Samantha Deana Winchester."

She joggled her head a little, looking up at the sound of her full name. Her husband was staring at her, amused. Sliding the plates toward him, she said with a convincing smirk, "Sorry. I got distracted by the smell. When will those be done?" She nodded her head at the steamy skillet, which was emitting the enchanting scent of perfectly-cooked beef. Dean, believing the excuse, split open five buns and placed the halves on the plates. "Probably another three or four minutes. I'm gonna go get Santa and Maxine."

" _Xantha_ and _Jessamy_."

"That's what I said."

Sam lightly punched him in the arm as he passed, and he stuck out his tongue. She smiled to herself, walking to the stove to keep an eye on the food. Things between her and Dean had been going so well for so long that it felt almost unreal. They had not legitimately fought, or had any major disagreements, since the Mark had been removed from him. And that seemed like ages ago. Sometimes Sam could not even fully comprehend that they were expecting a child (but then she'd look down and it would become quite real). Everything Sam Winchester had ever wanted was coming true all at once, and she did not know why, but she was enjoying every second of the bliss that she was finally allowed to experience.

"Oh my stars, that smells heavenly," said Xantha's voice, snapping Sam out of her reverie. Dean came up on her left and bumped her hip with his own, silently telling her to get out of his way. She rolled her eyes and strode toward the refrigerator. "What do you guys want to drink?" she asked their guests.

"Water's good with me - " said Xantha at the same time Jessamy inquired, "Got any beer?" Sam laughed. Dean turned his head to look at Jessamy, grinning. "'Got any beer,' she asks. That stuff's what runs through my veins instead of blood."

Sam inclined her head his way. "He's definitely not lying." Dean, spatula in one hand and smoking skillet in the other, turned toward the three girls and winked at no one in particular. "That's why they say I'm so intoxicating."

" _I_ certainly never said that," Sam said to Xantha in a mock-whisper as the midwives laughed. Dean faked a hurt look as he scooped the burgers onto buns. "I said _they_. Not _she_."

"Who're 'they,' then?"

"You know. People. Girls."

"Old women don't count, Dean."

"Oh - shut up." More laughter followed, and Sam beamed at her husband, shaking her head. He wiped his hands on his blue jeans and said, "Alright, ladies. Come fix yours how you want it."

Jessamy and Xantha started dressing their hamburgers, and Dean walked over to his wife. "You really don't think I'm intoxicating?" he simpered, poking out his lower lip. She stroked his cheek gently, looking deeply into his eyes and making her expression soften. Two seconds passed, and then she said, "Nope." Dean groaned and rolled his eyes as she laughed. She caught his hand before he moved too far away and kissed him. When they pulled apart, he looked a little drunk. Sam felt satisfied with this response. "Alright, point taken," he grumbled as if he could hear her thoughts. She smiled.

The four of them ate together and talked. The Winchesters discovered that Jessamy had proposed to Xantha when they were fifteen, at their freshman winter formal. Both of them had been ditched by their dates, two good-for-nothing teenage boys, and the girls had known one another for several years. Though each thought the other had forgotten the half-joking proposal, neither had. That was when they fell in love. Sam very much enjoyed hearing the story, and a few more they told, and when the meal was over and midnight rolled around, she almost didn't want to go to bed. But the women were exhausted from the drive; they took their plates into the kitchen and put them in the dishwasher, then bade Sam and Dean goodnight.

As the Winchesters loaded the rest of the dishes, putting Castiel's would-be plate back in the cabinet, Sam said, "You know, this is probably the closest we've come to having normal friends since we were in grade school."

Dean glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. "Yeah... that's weird." He closed the dishwasher and pressed the start button, then leaned against it. "Really weird," he continued. "I mean, think about it, Sammy. We've got a house now. An underground house, sure, but a house. We haven't been close to death in almost three whole months, and we haven't died of boredom. We have a kid on the way. Now we have two normal, human friends that aren't hunters." As he spoke, he ticked off each thing on his fingers, counting them out. "It's like... I don't know, it's like things are finally slowing down. Shaping up."

"I've been thinking the same thing. I think real life is starting for us, Dean."

"Yeah, but I'm up near forty, and you're in your early thirties."

"Better late than never, right?"

Dean took hold of her hands and pulled her close to him. She slipped her fingers into the spaces between his own, breathing out contentedly as he touched his lips briefly to hers. "Better late than never," he repeated, nodding. The tender sparkle in his bright green eyes made Sam's heart soar, even after all these years.


	42. Life

They went to bed soon after, curled up under the covers. Sam usually wrapped herself around her husband, since he was shorter, but tonight she laid on her back, staring at the ceiling. The pain from earlier had left her feeling a little more cautious than usual. Before either of them fell asleep, she whispered, " _Psst_. Dean... Are you awake?"

"Yeah, now."

She giggled. "What do you think about 'Emily?'" she asked. Feeling him shift onto his side so he could look at her, he repeated the name. It sounded beautiful coming from his mouth. He seemed to mull it over for a moment before responding. "I like it. A lot."

"I've always loved that name," she mused. "Don't know why." Dean breathed deeply, and Sam could see him smile a bit out of the corner of her eye. "I kinda like 'Willow.' Just sounds dignified. Like a princess," he added as an afterthought. Sam licked her lips, grinning. "We could do both," she said quietly.

"Emily Willow Winchester. Wow, what a ring. I think I just got chills."

Rolling her eyes, Sam smiled anyway because he was right. The name had such a wonderful sound to it. She could almost picture a pale-skinned, brown-haired little girl with springtime-green eyes dancing in and out of rooms with the grace of a flower's petals blowing in the breeze. The mental image made her heart swell.

"Wait, Sam. The initials would be E-W-W. Like, _ew_ ," said Dean. "Could we really make an innocent little girl live with that?" Sam laughed. "If we rearranged it to be Willow Emily Winchester," she explained, "it would be W-E-W. Pronounced like _woo_. Either way, it's a lose-lose situation. Beautiful names, ugly initials."

Dean chuckled, the sound low and gravelly, and it filled Sam's chest with something warm. After a beat, he said in his deep voice, "You know what name I've always really liked? Joshua."

"That's a Biblical name. Means, 'Yahweh is salvation' in Hebrew."

" _Yahweh?_ Wasn't that the monster in that _Scooby-Doo_ movie where they were in Australia for a concert?"

Sam grinned. "I... I have no idea. It's another word for 'God,' like _Jehovah_."

"Oh. Well, regardless of its origins, I like it. Feels like the kinda name that would belong to a stand-up guy. Somebody who'd be loyal and kind and strong." Sam turned her head to look at her husband as he spoke, smiling softly. "That's really sweet, Dean," she said. He attempted to shrug, though he was lying down.

"Y'know, we could always combine our names to come up with a new name," she told him after a second of silence. "Lots of parents do that." Dean sniffed once, thinking. "Our names, combined, would be _S-E-A-N_. Sean."

He pronounced it with a hard _E_ sound, drawing it out and overshadowing the _A_ completely. Sam bit back a laugh. "Dean, sweetheart, that spelling would be pronounced the same as _S-H-A-W-N_."

"Sean?"

"Yup."

Dean was quiet for a moment. He scratched his head, which was the only sound in the world briefly. The soundproof bunker blocked all other noises. "Joshua Sean Winchester," he said finally, and Sam actually _did_ get chills. Goosebumps rose on her arms. She knew that was the perfect name if their child ended up being a boy.

She rolled onto her side and snuggled up close to him, laying her head on his shoulder. Her hand splayed across his chest; he covered it with his own. "Joshua Sean or Emily Willow. Finally, a generation of Winchesters with good names."

"Hey, my name's not that bad."

"It's the same as mine, just in masculine form. Dean Samuel Winchester and Samantha Deana Winchester. Our parents weren't the original types, that's for sure."

"Lucky for us we have broader imaginations." He kissed her temple and sighed, relaxing against the pillows once more. "I can't wait to be a dad," he said randomly. Sam's heart practically glowed with happiness. His expression was so calm and unafraid, though there was that ever-present twinkle in his eye that she could see even in the dark. The shine let her know that an excitement was burning inside him. The love and joy she felt right then was so powerful she worried she would combust.

That was where the conversation ended, for nothing else needed to be said. They both dropped off to sleep soon after deciding on their future children's names. Sam did not dream; it was one of the most restful slumbers she had had in years. Nothing popped out of the endless darkness, nothing went bump in the night, no one screamed, and nothing was present that should not have been. Everything, at long last, was peaceful.

At 3:03 AM, exactly two hours after they had gone to bed, Sam was awakened by another violent spasm of pain in her stomach. She gasped as it ripped her from sleep, and she pressed a hand to where her child was. She could feel no movement, but she shifted into a sitting position anyway, leaning back against the headboard. Dean let out a deep snore but remained asleep. Breathing deeply, Sam began to count the seconds between each sharp pain. At first, they were ten to twelve seconds apart. After about a minute, they quickened to six apart, keeping an even pace. Finally, there were a mere two seconds that separated the crippling agony, and Sam clenched her teeth to keep a sound from escaping her. It did nonetheless, though, and it came out in the form of a high-pitched groan.

Dean jolted awake, blinking rapidly to ward off grogginess. "Sam?" he inquired thickly. A couple of tears fell from her eyes. The pain was so great that she could not get out the words to explain what was happening. Fear piled itself on top of that, as well. "Sam, honey," said Dean, sitting up as Sam leaned forward, clutching her stomach. Her breathing was wheezy and shallow.

"It's time," she choked out at last.

That was all Dean needed. Immediately he sprung out of bed, and in an instant he was at the door, flinging it open. Over the sound of her blood pumping in her ears, Sam heard him shouting for the midwives to wake up, hurry, Sam needs their help. Quick as lightning he was back at her side, holding tight to her hand. "They're coming, Sammy," he whispered soothingly as she bit back a shriek.

Within the moment two bedraggled women appeared in the doorway. "Sam, how far apart are your contractions?" asked one of them. Sam thought it might have been Xantha but she wasn't sure. She could not manage another word, so she squeezed Dean's hand extra hard with one hand and drew the number two on the top of it with the tip of her finger. "Two?" he said, uncomprehending. Sam was unable to repress the next sound, and a loud groan tore through her. Jessamy bolted to her side. Sam suddenly became very aware of the fact that the mattress beneath her was damp, and she glared down at it as the lights flicked on. There was no tint to the oblong shape of wet fabric; it just looked like water.

"X, fluid over here," said Jessamy, noticing the spot as well. "I think her water's broken."

"Two-second contractions? Yep. This baby's coming _now_."

Dean looked into his wife's face, whether searching for assurance or giving it, she was not sure. She met his eye, trembling with fear and intense discomfort, and elation flared up in her veins. Excitement. Their child was on the way!

It took a mere millisecond for the exhilaration to be extinguished. Their child was on its way _a whole month early._

Jessamy had Dean pull the blankets out from underneath Sam, leaving only the fitted sheet to be damaged by blood. He was also instructed to slip her panties off, and to tie her hair back so it wouldn't distract her. The sheets and underwear were then piled at the edge of the wall and forgotten, all attention back on the situation at hand.

"I'm gonna call Cas," Dean said. Sam nodded vigorously. "Who's that?" inquired Xantha in a calm tone as she reentered the room with a tub and a towel. Sam hadn't even noticed her leave. Dean did not answer her, but just replied, "He needs to be here." Instead of leaving the room to call for him, Dean simply bowed his head and shut his eyes so tight that his laughter wrinkles crinkled at the sides. Sam made herself focus on them, and how endearing they were, in order to preoccupy her mind. His grip on her hand only got stronger as the seconds ticked away. Jessamy gave him a strange look as she and her wife went about setting up the makeshift equipment.

"What's going on?" a deep voice asked from outside the door. Sam looked up to see the silhouette of Castiel, his shocking blue eyes wide with worry and curiosity. He strode into the room with a fast pace and stood next to where Dean was kneeled on the ground, putting a hand on the other man's shoulder. "Is it...?" Castiel began, but his voice trailed away. The question did not need to be finished, for he glanced around, taking in the room, and came to his own conclusion. "What can I do?" he then said, directing this inquiry at Jessamy and Xantha. The latter was staring at him, transfixed by his sudden appearance, but she answered, "Uh, y-you can, um..." She handed him the plastic tub, which was about the size of a kitchen sink. "You can fill this with warm water."

At once Castiel obliged, walking out of the room as suddenly as he'd appeared in it. Jessamy said, taking Sam's other hand, "Where did that man come from?" Sam and Dean exchanged a look, and after a second, Sam said, "Heaven." Dean grinned at their hands, still firmly wound together. Jessamy didn't ask anything else.

"Okay, Sam, what I need you to do now is breathe," said Xantha, poising herself so that she was directly in Sam's line of vision. "Very slowly, very deliberately. Can you do that for me?" Sam nodded and did what she said, evening out her breaths so they were deep and measured. She focused all her energy on controlling that one aspect, because that was the only thing she had control over at the moment. Xantha whispered things like "good" and "keep breathing" to encourage her as she checked to see how much longer they had until Sam had to begin birthing.

Apparently it wasn't long enough.

Speaking clearly and very calmly, Xantha said, "Sam, you probably feel some movement happening, and that's entirely normal. That just means the baby's moving so that its head is ready to come out. We're going to need to start pushing now, because you're crowning already."

Sam was terrified. The pain was unimaginable, reaching a caliber that she had never experienced, not even when she was killed. The current sensation in her vagina was like someone trying to push a watermelon through a straw. Things were stretching in ways she'd never had to feel before, and ways she was not even sure were physically possible. But none of that was why she was terrified. Sam Winchester had dealt with intense physical pain all her life. This may have been different, but she could handle it.

She was terrified because she had not felt the baby moving at all.

Castiel came back into the room carefully toting the tub, which was now full of water. Jessamy took it from him and set it down at the foot of the bed. He stood awkwardly for a moment, hands clasped in front of him, before Dean beckoned him over. Castiel walked toward him and helped Dean to his feet. Sam had had to remove her hand from his grip, though that was the last thing she wanted to do, so now the two men were anxiously onlooking.

"Sam, honey, I need you to focus on me, alright?" prompted Xantha. She'd propped up Sam's legs so that her knees pointed toward the ceiling, and her feet were planted about three feet apart on the fitted sheet beneath her. Jessamy stood behind her wife and looked between them. Sam and Dean did not see the furrow of her eyebrows or the widening of her eyes, but Castiel did. "X - "

"I know." Xantha put her hands on both of Sam's knees and began telling her how to breathe and push at the same time. Jessamy walked over to the men as Sam started the regimen. "This is gonna be really, really painful for her, Dean," she said. Dean's heart dropped into his stomach. "I would highly suggest you not being in the room until the baby's at least a quarter of the way out. Everything up until then will just be blood and screaming."

All the moments in Dean's life when he'd seen Sam cry flashed in front of his eyes like a movie. A highlights reel of the times he hated most. There were not many moments, but it was enough to make his insides freeze solid. Then came Sam in pain, blood or no blood. Then came the image of Sam dead, unwarranted and incredibly unwelcome, but that was what sealed the deal.

"I can't leave her in here," he told Jessamy, who cringed imperceptibly. "I'll feel even worse if she's hurting and I can't be here to hold her hand."

Jessamy nodded, and he strode to Sam's side. Without looking at him - for her eyes were shut both in concentration and agony - her hand shot out and grabbed onto his like it was her lifeline. He gripped right back.

When he was relatively far enough away that he would not hear her, Jessamy leaned toward Castiel and said, "At some point he's going to have to not be in here. I need you to take him out of the room when I give you the sign."

Castiel narrowed his eyes, though there were innumerable emotions exploding inside him. "Why?" he asked skeptically. Sam let out a scream that pierced his heart like a knife; he was surprised he could stay standing up straight. It felt like he'd been knocked to the ground. Jessamy's eyes flitted to the floor, then back to his, and she said quietly, "I know I just met you and you have no reason whatsoever to believe me, but please. Trust me here. For both their sakes."

He did not have the opportunity to neither accept nor decline, for Jessamy went back to Sam. Castiel tensed as another of her shrieks filled the air. Dean was now in charge of regulating her breathing, as Xantha worked the baby through the birth canal. Jessamy gave Sam a rolled-up rag to bite on, then put a towel under her bottom so the sheets wouldn't be totally bloodstained. She then moved her legs a little further apart.

"Here it comes!" said Xantha. Sam's screams were growing louder as the pain intensified beyond anything she could have imagined. She was almost certain she was going to die doing this, but Dean squeezed her hand every time she made a sound, and she remembered that there was going to be so much to live for when it was over with.

Another forty seconds passed before Xantha spoke again. "I see the head! Give me a few more big pushes, Sam!" Jessamy took hold of Sam's other hand once more. Sam locked eyes with her guardian angel across the room as she heaved another agonizing push; her irises were full of tears and they appeared to be quivering. "Cas," said Dean desperately, "is there anyth - "

"I can only heal, Dean," Castiel answered, defeated. "I can't sedate her, or make this painless."

" _C'mon, Sam!_ " shouted Xantha. "You can do it, just a couple more!"

Jessamy looked up from where the baby was about a quarter of the way out, its head visible up to the chin, and stared pointedly at Castiel. At once he walked over and pulled Dean to his feet, wrenching him from Sam's grasp. "What the _hell_ are you doing?" he demanded, fighting against his hold furiously. "Cas, _let me go!_ " Castiel managed to shove Dean out the door and into the hallway, though he knew subconsciously that his skin would have a few bruises. He pulled the door shut as he went through it and touched the knob, knowing without checking that he locked it with his power.

_"Castiel, what the hell—"_

"The tall one suggested that you wait out here," he told Dean. He attempted to hide the fact that he was uncomfortable with Dean using his full name again.

"I don't give a damn what she suggested!" Dean yelled. "I need to be in the room _with my wife_ while she gives birth to _our child!_ I can't just stand out here!" Castiel did not let his eye contact waver, which typically calmed Dean down. After a few seconds, he began to do just that. "Why would she make you bring me out here?" he asked lowly. Fear had replaced the anger in his green eyes.

Castiel suspected the reason. He was perceptive, and he was clever. A hard man to lie to. The angel knew far more about the situation than he was going to tell. At least, he was certainly not going to tell it now. At some point in the future, maybe. If what he was suspecting came to fruition, though, perhaps he would never truly have to tell either of them. But as of right now, Dean was concerned and afraid for his wife, whom he loved more than life itself, Castiel knew. So all he needed to do, currently, was console him.

"I don't know," he lied convincingly. "But don't worry, Dean. They would tell you if something was wrong. It's probably because they can tell you would hate seeing her in so much torment."

"I hope you're right."

"I'm not often wrong."

Dean let out a weak chuckle, running a hand through his short hair. Then he scrubbed his face with his other hand and glanced at a nearby clock hanging on the wall. It was nearly five o'clock in the morning. They had been at it for almost two hours. The silence that surrounded Dean made him uneasy, but at the same time, he had never been more grateful that the walls and doors of the bunker were soundproof. It was very likely that he would be hearing Sam's screams in his nightmares for weeks after tonight.

The only thing that made him forget it all was the fact that it was all happening because his child was being born. An actual child, half his and half hers, was being born as he breathed. A child they would raise and teach and love unconditionally. A child that would never be subjected to the life they had led, but a life it could choose for itself. A child that would be able to change the world in the way that ordinary human beings did: through acts of kindness and service, with cleverness and brilliance.

A life was entering the world.


	43. Where You've Gone

Castiel peered at Dean with furrowed eyebrows and a slight frown. "Are you alright?" he asked, though this was a bit of a rhetorical question. Dean sucked his teeth absently and replied, "No. Won't be till I'm back in there." Castiel nodded understandingly a few times before leaning against the wall behind him, the wall that belonged to the front of Sam and Dean's bedroom. As his trenchcoat-laden back touched the stone, it was almost as if something white-hot seared through the fabric and into his skin. He straightened back up immediately, glancing at the wall with as much casualness as he could muster. No emblem was drawn into it in blood; there were no markings of any kind. Nothing but a pale expanse of eggshell-ish paint over wide stones. Then Castiel felt a surge of emotion - which he was still not used to anyway - so powerful that it nearly knocked him over. He tried to disregard what he knew it had to mean, tried to bury the feeling that he hated more than all the rest, including love.

Dean scratched his stubbly chin. It had been seven minutes and twenty-four seconds since he'd left Sam's side. He was far too aware of every _tick_ sound the clock made. Even though he fought hard to keep the frightened thoughts at bay, they still invaded his mind. _Why would they send me out?_ he wondered, half angrily. _I'm her husband! If anyone needs to be in there it's me!_ Internally he stewed, and his blood boiled, though the fury was completely irrational and he knew that. Sam had always told him that when he was scared, he got angry. He tried to keep it in check, but this was a different fear. This was not a fear for his own life or even hers: it was for someone who had not even gotten the chance to exist yet.

A calming vision intruded on the vast darkness in his brain, filling it with a gentle light and something like the touch of the softest cotton sheets. It was purity, and it was goodness. In his mind he could see the visage of a child running around in the grass. At first, it looked like a little girl, with long, flowy brown hair and creamy white skin dotted with freckles. Then it seemed to switch to the shape of a boy. He was thin and wiry, with a shock of dirty-blonde hair piled on top of his head. His eyes were the perfect mixture of blue and green, of grass and sky.

_Joshua Sean or Emily Willow_ , his brain said in Sam's sleepy voice, and that was the only thing that relaxed him since he first heard Sam's grunts of pain two hours ago.

Somewhat in a daze, like he was just wandering about, Dean stepped forward and turned the knob on the door, a sort of feeble last-resort attempt to get back into the room. To his shock, he found it unlocked, and before Castiel had registered what he had done, Dean sprang into his bedroom.

Sam was upright in bed, her legs now lying still and straight beneath the comforter. She was staring down at her hands, which were sitting in her lap. Her forehead shone with sweat, her hair stringy and damp. The dim, dusty light in the room barely pervaded the predawn darkness in the room, but there was enough of it to highlight the unhealthy white tint in her skin. All the well-toned muscles that lined her collarbones and arms looked concave, like they were falling inward, collapsing. Like she was folding in on herself. He didn't say anything as he approached, but he did stop at the foot of the bed instead of going all the way to her side. Castiel entered behind him, the single syllable of Dean's name dying on his lips as if he was being strangled.

The air didn't feel like air anymore. It felt like lead, like cement. Too heavy to breathe.

Dean pushed away every bad thought that bombarded him, for he knew the heaviness was probably because she was exhausted and sore. "Hey," he whispered. Sam did not look up. "Where are Xantha and Jessamy? Did they go to wash him or her off? Oh, and which is it?" he added with a light chuckle. "A _him_ or a _her_? An Emily or a Joshua?"

A tear brimmed in Sam's eye, and Dean's heart stopped. Just for a moment. Just long enough.

"Just breathe, honey," he said shakily, taking another step closer. His mind on high alert, he noticed his wedding band glint in the lamplight as he moved, a small occurrence that he normally would not have seen. "In and out. It must've hurt like hell, and I'm so sorry."

The tear fell.

"Sam? Baby... what's wrong?"

The door in the corner of their room was standing open. It led into a back hallway that housed a private bathroom. They usually made sure it was closed because the hall was oddly drafty and made their bedroom cold at night. Dean pieced together that the doulas and his newborn child were back in there, but what he could not understand was why his wife was so upset or why she would not look at him.

Or why he could not hear crying.

Why could he hear no crying?

Sam sniffled, the first sound to come out of her since he had left amidst her screams. Dean swallowed so hard that it was painful, and he forced his eyes away from the open door to focus on her and her trembling hands and her alarmingly small form. She had never looked so small to him before. Sam drew a tremulous breath and spoke, her voice quieter than a falling leaf, "I'm sorry, Dean."

It was almost like someone up in Heaven hit the _Pause_ button on a master remote of some kind. The world screeched to a halt in its tracks, all across history. Moments were frozen, people everywhere left in midstride and midsentence and mid-bite and mid-kiss. Nothing moved. Except Dean. He was the only thing in the whole entire world that was able to work his limbs, but he didn't want to, so he channeled that energy and somehow transferred it into his wife to keep her talking. He had to know why she was sorry. _Why was she sorry?_

"Jessamy said it wasn't our fault," Sam continued. Her voice was thick with a repressed sob, and it shook. Dean tried to zero in on the sound and not the words, because the words were ripping him from reality but the sound was keeping him tethered to it.

She went on, "She said we couldn't have stopped it, that we had done everything right. She said we didn't do anything wr..." Sam let out a soft sob, pressing a hand to her mouth. Another wet sniff emanated from behind her hand, from between her shaking fingers. Her eyes were wider than they had been.

"We didn't do anything wrong, Dean."

Dean sucked in his first breath since he entered the room, but it did nothing to make him feel alive. He was not numb, though he wished he was, at that moment. He wished he was outside of his body, that it would feel the hectic onslaught of emotions that besieged him without his mind present. He wished harder than ever before that he could be detached until the pain was over, until the sharp, persistent, never-ending stabs had faded into a dull pulse in his veins that sounded just like the regular thrum of life, only with a darker hue. No, he could feel everything. From the plummet of his heart to the floorboards beneath his feet, to the drop in temperature in the room, to the lining of his throat transforming into sandpaper, to the piercingly sharp sword that drove itself directly through his heart. He could feel all of it. And it all happened at once.

The vision of the angelic girl in his imagination, of the graceful little boy, they both were being washed away in a tidal wave of murky water and dark color. All of the bright, airy, golden tints of the daydream had been replaced by the color one would see when one mixes multiple paints together: an indecipherable, unnamable shade of darkness that does not even look like it should exist, and yet there it is.

She had not said the words but she did not need to. He knew - oh, _God_ , he knew - that hearing her say it out loud would only make it far more _real_ than he could handle.

Sam was outright crying now. Her breaths came in shallow wheezes that he was sure would cause her to hyperventilate, but he could not move forward to comfort her. His legs were tree stumps, his feet their roots, binding him to that one spot on the floor for all eternity. He was not even entirely certain if he himself was breathing or not, but then again, it really didn't matter.

His wife's sobs quieted after a few seconds, as if signifying an atmospheric change. Almost immediately upon noticing this, Dean heard the scuffle of shoes on dusty wooden floors, and Jessamy and Xantha appeared in the doorway at the back corner of the room. The latter had been crying; Dean could see it in her eyes. The former was holding protectively to an oddly oblong bundle of towels.

Without a word Jessamy hesitantly made her way over to Dean, who simply watched her approach. He could feel his eyes widen and his mouth open a little, but he made no sound. She walked slowly, and stopped about a foot away from him, facing him full-on. Because she was so close, he could see her arms shaking a bit.

Instead of _Pause_ , somebody Upstairs was having a lot of fun with the _Slow-Mo_ feature. Everything Dean saw was blurred, like he was moving too fast for the things around him to catch up. It sounded as if he was underwater, or encased in cotton. He felt stifled, and deaf, and blind, and helpless.

Jessamy laid the bundle in his arms, her eyes trained on his own as she moved. He could see his own reflection in her browns; he looked as if he could have been blown over with a sigh.

The towels were much lighter than he expected. Not too light, though. Almost normal. The most normal thing he'd ever experienced, actually.

He was too afraid to look down. He didn't want to see what was wrapped in those towels.

_Don't look down._

It was as if he was afraid of falling from a treacherous height, but he was still on the ground, wasn't he? Perhaps he was on a totally different plane, and that was why things looked so different to him. Why he was either moving too fast or too slow for the world around him. But if he looked down, if he happened to so much as peek at the mass that lay within the wrappings in his arms, he knew he would crash right back into his own plane. The plane with edges a little too sharp and pictures a little too clear and dreams a little too lifelike and life a little too nightmarish. The plane of reality. And he would crash so hard, so quickly, that he would probably explode in a shower of sparks and anger and disappointment and resentment, and that explosion would tear the universe to shreds, to shards, to billions and billions of mere fragments of what it had been, because _of all people, why did they deserve this?_

But Dean, to his core, was too strong to submit to being so weak.

Dean did look down.

And he saw the perfectly-rounded white face, two small light-colored moles on either side of the pointed little nose. He saw the gentle brush of golden brown hair reaching in light wisps about an inch away from the soft head. He saw the full, innocently-puckered lips that sat above the tiniest chin he'd ever laid eyes on. He saw the dark eyelashes, which curled upward on the chubby cheeks in such a beautifully pure way that he thought he was looking at a painting. Nothing this perfect could have truly been real. Nothing this consummate could have ever even been created.

His knees hit the floor, and he had been sitting on them for about twenty seconds before he realized that he'd fallen like that. Honestly, he had not been completely sure that the floor would be there to catch him. Everything other than the ethereal little thing in his arms had faded out of his mind. Nothing else mattered.

Someone was saying quietly that they did everything they could. Dean did not really listen. He sat on his knees and counted how many eyelashes rested against the cheeks of this child. A few moments passed and a door closed behind him. There were two hundred and seventeen eyelashes, but he counted again, just to be certain. A few more moments, and a figure had crouched beside him. Still Dean did not take his eyes off the baby in the towels in his arms. His baby, the most beautiful baby that had ever been brought into the world.

"Can...?" he heard himself start, but he did not know how he was going to finish the question.

A deep voice to his left answered anyway. "I... No, I c - I can't. I can't bring things back to life. I... I'm sorry."

Dean already knew this.

Sam Winchester was not crying anymore. She had returned to her trance, sitting with her eyes on the comforter and her hands still in her lap. Every once in a while, a tear dripped from one of her eyes and made a thick, muted _thunk_ sound as it hit the sheet.

Joshua Sean Winchester began to blur in Dean's vision. He pressed his lips to the child's forehead and tucked him under his chin, rocking back and forth on his knees in a way that would not have been noticeable if one had not been paying attention. No one had told Dean that the baby was a boy. They did not have to. Something about "fathers always know" resounded in his head, but he shoved the thought away with an angry blink, which infuriatingly caused a tear to fall. The drop embedded itself in Joshua's thin tuft of hair.

_Perfection was never meant to exist_ , Dean Winchester thought as he rocked his would-be child to eternal sleep.


	44. How Can I Help You To Say Goodbye?

It was a long, quiet time.

    The midwives left a day after Sam gave birth, full of apologies and teary eyes. At least, that was what Castiel told Dean. Neither Winchester had had the strength to see them off. Castiel walked them back to their little Volkswagen and reassured them that there were no hard feelings toward them. Jessamy left a personal phone number with him to give to his friends, for if they needed to talk at all or ever wanted to get together again, and he politely accepted. He knew better, of course, than to think that Sam and Dean would want to sit and chat with the women who birthed their stillborn child.

    Sam had not spoken a word since they buried Joshua Sean, which took place two days after Jessamy and Xantha departed. Dean handmade the smallest coffin either of them had ever laid eyes on, and carved their son's name into the lid of the dark wood with his switchblade. The box was beautiful; its staining made it sleek and almost reflective. He lined the inside with soft fabrics and pillowing. Some part of him wanted to be sure that the child was comfortable, somehow.

    There was a field behind where the bunker lay hidden. Wildflowers grew there in the spring and made it look like the most peaceful place in the world, as close to Heaven as Earth could be. That was where they burned Charlie's bones when she had died. And it would be where they would bury their son.

    Sam walked slowly, sort of aimlessly, until she came upon a patch of loose earth near the middle of the field. Dean carried a stuffed bear they had planned to give to him to sleep with in one hand; in his other was a shovel. Castiel toted the coffin behind him, a hammer and a few nails banging around inside. Sam cradled Joshua, bundled in fresh infant clothes and wrapped in a baby's blanket, tightly in her arms. She said nothing when she found the spot, simply stopped and took a deep breath.

    The older Winchester shoveled the ground out, creating a small two-by-three-foot grave. It was not very deep. He focused on the mindless work as much as he could, trying to block out how hollow he felt on the inside. Like he himself had had everything within him shoveled out.

    The younger Winchester looked at the grass under her feet. She subconsciously positioned her arms and hands so that no part of her skin touched her son's. It was not because she was afraid to do so because he was dead. That wasn't it at all. It was because she knew that if she physically touched his tiny body, in any way other than through his clothing, she would have to ask her husband to dig a grave for her, as well.

    The angel watched each of his friends for a couple seconds in turn. His heart broke for both of them. It was not a sadness he had ever felt before. This was different. Very real. Very personal. He tried to numb it out but he couldn't even reduce it to a dull throb. It pulsated and festered and burned in his veins until he had to wonder if he had actually caught fire or not.

    No words were exchanged as Dean threw the shovel down in the grass. Castiel gently laid the coffin down at the edge of the grave and opened its lid, revealing the crème-colored interior. Sam knelt down in front of it, and so did Dean. Their friend remained upright, eyes burning with tears he had never felt the need to shed before now. Sam repositioned Joshua Sean so that her husband could help lower him down, her hands on the baby's right side and his on his left. Neither looked at the other. They couldn't bear to.

    The dead always look at peace. Sam supposed that God planned it like that so that their loved ones would not hate Him for taking them away.

    But no amount of tranquil facial expressions would ever redeem God in Sam's eyes after this.

    They put the lid on the coffin together, and Sam took a snapshot of her firstborn son's face in her memory. She studied his beautiful little form and locked him away in her heart, imagining what his laugh would have sounded like and how he would have looked if he'd smiled. Dean hammered in six nails; his wife did the other six. In unison they both took a side of the box and scooted over to the grave.

    Now they did exchange a look. Sam's breath caught and something sharp stabbed her lungs. The sun shone down on them, casting strange shadows through leaves on the trees and as birds flew overhead. Some of those shadows stretched across Dean's face, just for a moment. All of the darkness in the world felt located inside of her. She wondered if he could see it.

    A car honked distantly. Then a bird chirped.

    The world continued spinning.

    She was standing still.

    Sam and Dean Winchester lowered Joshua Sean Winchester into his shallow grave on the 28th of October.

    Castiel felt the heaviness in the bunker. It was unlike anything he'd ever experienced on Earth, and he had been around for a long time.

Dean never slept, not after the night Joshua was born and died. He sat perfectly still for hours at a time, a bottle of beer in his hand. Castiel never saw him drink it, but eventually it would end up empty, yet Dean still did not move. Every once in a while the angel would find him in a different place than he had been a few minutes ago. Most of the time, however, he would sit in a chair and stare blankly in front of him, his eyes red and rimmed with purple from the lack of sleep. New lines appeared on his face overnight: foreign creases deepened at the edges of his mouth and in three soft slopes on his forehead. He looked older, much older.

Sam never left their bedroom. Castiel went in to check on her a couple of times each day, but when he would open the door just a crack to peer inside, she would be in the same position. Curled into a ball beneath the sheets of the bed, but not sleeping. She, too, would stare into space, expressionless. She did not eat.

This went on for a week and a half before Castiel had worked up the nerve to talk to Dean.

He sat on the coffee table in front of him on this day, directly in Dean's line of unfocused vision. The Winchester did not seem to even register his friend's presence. Castiel said his name once, but there was no response, so he grabbed the beer bottle in Dean's hand and sat it on the table. This finally roused a reaction. It was not much, but it was something. Dean's eyes slid drunkenly to the angel's face, locking gazes with him.

"Dean, you can't live like this," Castiel told him gently. "You're wasting away."

He did not say anything, just slowly blinked.

"What is the point of both of you killing yourselves like this? I understand you need to mourn. But why aren't you mourning _together_? You might heal each other."

Still no response.

Castiel was growing frustrated, though he was not entirely sure why. He figured it might have been because he cared so deeply for both of them. Or because he was so worried about them. Or because he was hurting too, far more than he ever thought he could, and he had had no opportunity to do his share of mourning because he'd been so preoccupied with fixing the Winchesters. It could have been many things, but nevertheless, Castiel leaned toward Dean with determination alighting a flame in his shocking blue eyes. Something sparked behind Dean's greens, dim but noticeable.

"Dean. You know this isn't the way. You know this isn't how this needs to be done."

" _Needs_ to be done," echoed Dean, a crease appearing between his eyebrows. His voice was hoarse from being unused for the past eleven days. "So there's a right and wrong way to die of sadness?"

Castiel stiffened. "You're not dying."

"Sure feels like it."

"What would be the point in dying now? After everything?"

"What would be the point in _living_ , Cas?" Dean sat up in the armchair; his gaze did not waver from the angel's. He sniffed once, eyes shining a bit in the way that only a broken heart can. "I lost my son. My first and only son. I never got to meet him. I'll never get to see him look at me and smile, or feel him hold my hand, or teach him how to walk and ride a bike and read." Dean's voice cracked slightly, but he let out a shaky breath, steadying himself. Castiel felt very small. "I wanted to be a dad so badly, and now... Now I'll never get the chance."

Castiel shook his head. "You can still have children," he told him, his tone quiet and careful. "This isn't the end. This was not a one-shot deal. You and Sam can still have children someday."

"We don't even know if we'll live to see next year," Dean replied sharply. "I don't know how the hell we managed to survive this long, but we did." He relaxed his shoulders, and every muscle in his body seemed to lose mass at once. He shrunk as he titled toward Castiel. "Sam has wanted kids ever since I can remember," he continued in a pale voice. "She's always wanted a family, a home. And I have too. I've always, _always_ wanted to make a family with her. And right when we thought we _finally_ had it all together... something took it away. Snatched out from right under our noses."

The sorrow on Dean's face was so pure and unfiltered that Castiel felt the blood in his vessel's veins run cold. That was an unusual occurrence, and it nearly knocked the air out of him. He wished he could take that pain on himself, bear it so Dean would not have to, but he knew better. Coming clean now would only make his friend hurt more, or, quite possibly, make him hate Castiel forever.

He settled himself by putting a hand on the edge of Dean's knee. "All that pain you're feeling," he said lowly, "every last bit of it? Sam's feeling it too. And it's likely that it's amplified for her. She gave birth to a child that never got the chance to take its first breath. Imagine the weight that she must be carrying. And since that day, Dean, while you've been here, she has been carrying that weight _all alone_."

Dean was very still for a moment. Castiel counted forty-three seconds before any sort of movement happened, and the movement was not one he expected. A tear brimmed at the bottom of Dean's left eye, collected into a fat drop, then slid all the way down to his jaw, where it fell to the circular collar of dirty his tee-shirt. (He had not changed or showered in all this time, either). The sound it made was muffled yet incredibly pervasive.

Then, without a word, Dean stood up from his chair and started toward his bedroom.

It was as if the emotions inside of him had stalled. They stopped right in their tracks within his bloodstream, waiting for a stimulant to get them moving again. Dean would fight diligently to make sure that nothing ever prompted their flow again, not to the caliber they had been going at. For the past week and a half, he had not _chosen_ to be stagnant; he had physically and mentally been torpid. Every slight motion drew all the life out of him like the air he breathed was a vacuum. He'd believed, in the state he was in, that giving Sam space was the best he could do for her. Perhaps he had been wrong. Perhaps she needed him now more than ever before.

When his hand touched the metal knob on their bedroom door, energy shot through him like an electrical pulse. It should have done the opposite, he felt. Such a daunting task and onerous conversation should have drained him completely, frightened him into turning around and trying again tomorrow.

But it didn't.

Because Dean knew that behind that door a woman he loved far more than he could ever quantify. Behind that door was a woman who, in solitude, had been facing the memories of her son's face and the nightmares about what his cries would have sounded like. Behind that door was his wife, a woman was, at that moment, just as broken as him.

The wood creaked softly as the inside of his bedroom opened up before him. A floorboard groaned under his weight. He never noticed the subtle beauty of these sounds before. The mass of bedsheets and comforter on the left side of the bed was almost unperceptively moving up and down with the silent breaths of the person underneath. As Dean got closer, he saw a tangled head of brown hair covering a winsomely feminine face. Her eyes were not closed. They stared unblinkingly ahead, locked on something he could not see and doubted he ever would.

A million words had been flitting about in his head. Now they all dissipated.

Sam's right hand surfaced from beneath the covers, stark white against the dreary gray and dark brown around them. She reached behind her without looking and scrabbled for his fingers, her own trembling remarkably. When they found his, she gripped tight.

Not a word was said. Dean realized that he should have known they had no need for something as meaningless as that, as bantering or dialog. What they needed, what they had always needed, was one another. Dean climbed into the bed with her and pressed himself into her back as she shifted a little to give him room. They held to each other for dear life, for everything, and now when they cried, they no longer felt so alone.


	45. Just Salt In The Wound

It was just like Castiel said. All Sam and Dean needed in order to heal was each other. It took time, of course. Another two weeks after Dean mustered up the courage to face his wife. But when that long month of sadness passed, Sam was finally able to sleep without seeing images of her child's face. Only once or twice a week was she plagued with nightmares about Joshua Sean. Dean, too, could feel less of a heaviness.

    It was around the end of November when Sam woke up rather suddenly in the middle of the night. Nothing had frightened her, nor had she had a bad dream. She stared around her for a minute before she felt it. The unmistakable sensation of being watched. Glancing down at Dean to ensure he was asleep, Sam grabbed her handgun from the bedside table, crawled out from under the covers, and crept through the bedroom door. The floorboards creaked beneath her as she slowly moved toward the main room of the bunker.

    The hallway was eerie at night. She'd always thought that. But as a draft blew across her legs and arms, only partially protected beneath baggy sweatpants and a white tee-shirt, the unease within her heightened. Her feet felt like ice on the cold floor. Goosebumps exploded to life on her skin. She gripped the gun tighter, the library coming into view around the corner.

    A figure stood silhouetted by a single lamp, sitting lit on the biggest table in the room, the one they typically used for meals. Sam squinted hard at the person for a moment before the fear in her peaked, then fell, because the frame of this figure was far too familiar. She lowered her gun and shoved it between her waistband and her lower back.

    "Cas," she said softly. The angel jumped slightly as he turned to face her. His trenchcoat was draped across one of the chairs, a black blazer lying on top of it and starkly contrasting the tan material. Even though he was wearing a white button-up, leather shoes, and nice dress pants, Sam thought he looked practically naked. Her eyes still adjusting to the low light, Sam blinked at him for a second. In the lamplight, his early-forties facial features appeared older. Lines that had not previously been present drew thin streams across his face as his eyebrows pulled together in thought.

    Castiel, recovering from the start she had given him, angled himself toward her and smiled. "Are you alright?" he asked. She shrugged in response, and he narrowed his eyes. Sam sighed. "I'm working on it," she said finally. "I'm better than I was yesterday, and that's what counts."

    The angel nodded thoughtfully a few times. An awkward beat of silence followed, but Sam remembered why she was awake in the first place. "Hey, did you see anything weird around here? I woke up feeling like somebody was in our bedr - "

    "That was me," he interrupted. His gaze was downcast in embarrassment. "I'm sorry." Sam just shook her head, intrigued and amused. "Cas, why were you loitering in our bedroom door? Is everything okay?" He scratched the back of his neck, his shirt collar folding unevenly on one side. Sam took a couple steps toward him and waited patiently; she tried to watch his eyes to see how they changed, or if they even would. She was still a little in the dark about the expanse of Castiel's emotional capacity - whether he felt a wide range of emotions, or just a few.

    Castiel swallowed hard, and Sam realized that he was not avoiding the question. He was trying to figure out how to answer it. Her amusement evaporated, now replaced with concern. "Cas. Tell me what's wrong," she said as she moved closer still. The six or seven feet between them had now shrunk to one and a half, two at the most. He breathed very deeply.

    "I've been trying to be courageous enough to go through with something for a month," he said in his gravelly voice. He made some uncertain gesticulations to go with his sentences. "Every day, the words form in my head and I look at you and Dean to start, but I never do it. Every night, I come and start to wake you both up, because it's been keeping me awake, but I get too nervous to actually do it, so I just leave. Every second of every day, I'm thinking about what I have to tell you two, and then I'm thinking about what will inevitably happen afterward, and I... I feel afraid."

    Sam felt her heartrate pick up a notch, but she kept her expression understanding and gentle, because her friend seemed to be really upset. "Cas, look at me," she said, and he did. Almost immediately, his bright blue eyes met her own hazels, and his pupils dilated. Sam tried to forget what she had read about that. She tried to forget that when someone's pupils dilated when they looked at another person, it meant that they were looking at someone they loved immensely. "Whatever it is you have to tell Dean and I, you tell us. I don't care what you think will happen. If it's important, we need to know. You have to realize that the three of us have gotta handle things _together_ , as a family."

    "It isn't life-or-death," he replied quickly, gaze still locked with hers. "This is not something that would destroy the world. It's just... it's something I've known, for a long time, and I haven't been able to decide if it's even worth telling you because it won't change _anything_. It'll just hurt."

    Sam paused, considering, and numbing out the saddened throb her heart gave. "Is this about you and me?"

    "... In a sense, I suppose."

    "Cas, please just tell me. You know me. I'm not going to hate you. I could never. And neither could Dean. Just tell me, and I'll weigh if it needs to be shared with him or not."

    Castiel's eyes flittered away from Sam's briefly, flicking to the floor and then back up. As soon as their gazes met once more, it was as if a rope had appeared between them, binding them together so that neither could look away, even if they wanted to. Bluer-than-blue on fathomless hazel. The angel's face fell slightly the longer he looked at her, and the worry within Sam's chest blossomed. It seeded itself deep beneath her heart, in the coldest spot possible, and reached tiny tendrils out to touch the outer reaches as well as the inner. When he spoke, it was abrupt, yet also very slow and deliberate. Precisely the way he always talked, but with a morbid twist that seemed to hinder him from being sure of himself.

    "It's about your son."

    All of a sudden, Sam's heart stopped altogether. She attempted to completely ignore the staggering pain that pierced through her at the mention of him, and replied, in what she hoped was a gentle and understanding way, "Okay, I see why it was a touchy issue to begin with. I - "

    "No, that... That isn't the worst of it."

    "... I figured it wouldn't be." Sam wasn't even certain if her organs were still inside her body. She sounded quite strong, but felt quite hollow, at the moment. "How much worse does it get?" Castiel furrowed his eyebrows in thought, or pain, maybe, and that told her all she needed to know. It got much, much worse than simply being about her stillborn son.

    Castiel clenched his fists, perhaps in an effort to collect his strength. "Do you remember that time Dean left for a while, because he did not know Gadreel was posing as Ezekiel within you?" he asked. This was another blow to Sam, but she contented herself with a deep inhalation and wordless nod. Castiel mirrored her movement. "And do you remember how, when we were looking for a way to summon Gadreel, we..." He dropped his eyes from hers.

_Slept together_. The words rang loud and clear in the thick silence that followed. Again, Sam simply gave a nod, her expression softer so he would not feel intimidated. It did not seem to ease him, however, for she noticed that he was shaking. Visibly, actually trembling. In all her years in knowing him, she had never once seen him so nervous, never mind even the thought of afraid. But here he was. An angel from one of the most powerful garrisons in Heaven, completely and utterly petrified to talk to one of his best friends.

    Dread replaced the worry in Sam's veins. The latter felt cold, like slush. The former was frozen as well, but in an entirely separate way. Like being trapped beneath a snow bank during a blizzard, and it just kept getting heavier and heavier until she knew she would be smothered within moments.

    "Angels and humans are very different beings," said Castiel in his gravelly voice, words forming quickly and anxiously in the air. "When two humans have intercourse, the human female typically sees or senses signs of pregnancy, or lack thereof, within days. Two angels having intercourse is virtually unheard of. Why, I cannot say. It's always confused me, honestly. However, um... Situations have arisen where an angel and a human have... well, you know. There have not been many cases but they exist nonetheless. If, when this happens, the human female becomes pregnant... Well, it both slows and accelerates. When she first realizes that she may be pregnant, usually after four to five months have passed, the hybrid child - called Nephilim - is already fully developed, just very small. It grows in size alone as the normal, nine-month human gestation cycle begins."

    Sam's heart was beating very quickly. She wondered how long it would take for it to explode from her chest.

    Castiel drew a shaky breath and looked at her, finally. "How long was it after that day that you realized you were pregnant?" His voice was very quiet, and the world around them seemed still as the grave, waiting for her response. She felt, though, that she did not even need to give it. By the tone of his voice, and the sad wrinkle between his eyebrows, she knew that he knew the answer.

It had been five months, nearly exactly, when she took and misread the pregnancy test.

    Reality as she knew it began crumbling on all sides of her. She was trapped.

    "I found out when you asked me to check on the baby after that particularly violent case," he told her. "I almost wish I had never had to know. I wish that information had never entered my mind, but he... he gave it to me. His soul was reaching out to me and I..." He trailed off, a choked sort of sound emitting from his throat.

Sam put a hand on the column near her to keep herself upright, and she could not even feel its cold stone beneath her fingers. Castiel rubbed a hand across his mouth, appearing to stifle a silent sob. Something inside Sam broke, shattered into little shards and scattered themselves all over the floor. She wondered if she'd be able to find them anytime soon, but still yet the world felt frozen, captivated and enraptured by the scene that was unfolding, and she began to fear that it would never start up again. She had only just gotten some normalcy back, and here it was being taken from her again. The longer she looked at the angel's face, the less she really saw it. Everything was blurred, either by tears or fatigue or just plain shock. In all honesty, she didn't know what she was feeling. Just that there was a lot of it, and it sliced right through every molecule in her body.

Even though she opened her mouth to say something, no words came out. What would she have said, anyway? Castiel, however, seemed to finally work up enough strength and composure to speak.

"Joshua was my son."

That was it. The catalyst. The jump-starter. Sam let out a very long sigh, her head growing light. Everything she had ever known about how the universe worked broke down around her. Nothing was real anymore; nothing made any sense. The whole of reality either split crookedly down the middle, or simply fell away; she wasn't sure which. Whichever it was, it left behind nothing but a curiously empty space, a vast expanse filled with the uncomfortable closeness of a crowded elevator, and a prolonged sense of dread. She felt a strong urge to ask him how, but he had just told her how, so what good would that do? Then she thought she needed to question why, but who would have the answer to that? How could she expect him to know why it worked out this way? Someone had to know, but why ask the question when she would not receive an answer? Her brain was spinning around in circles, grasping at metaphorical straws as it attempted to piece the remnants of her sanity back together like a patchwork quilt.

And then, with just as much of an impact (if not more), something else hit her.

With a timorous sort of tone, she rasped, "All this time... Dean has been mourning a child that... that wasn't... his?" Her voice broke somewhere along the line. The words fell and shattered like glass to the hard floor beneath her feet.

If she had looked a little harder, or through less tear-filled vision, she would have seen something gleam behind Castiel's eyes too. It was a spark, a flame that simmered and flared when she was near him or spoke to him or even met his gaze, but she rarely ever noticed it. Sam typically wrote it off as the light bouncing off his beautiful blues, so she admired quietly and did not think much of it. He had long since learned to control himself, to stifle the slight pain he felt when Dean kissed her or touched her in an offhandedly loving way. He had learned to repress the intense desire to do these things himself, because after all, he promised her he would look after them platonically. As his friends. But all the promises and empty threats and sharp reminders that rung in his head all hours of the day and night couldn't hold a candle to the attention he paid to Sam Winchester. And here she was, standing in front of him, broken once more, and this time because of something that had entirely been his fault.

_Was it worth it?_ he shouted at himself internally, his face burning hot but his chest frozen solid. _The truth is out, but was it worth breaking her heart again? Was it worth this new scar? Was it worth it?_

Sam, however, was already working her way towards the opposite end of the spectrum. She was completely skirting over the agonizing pang that kept reverberating in her chest, its echo making a simple, single-syllable sound: _Why?_ She ignored it in full, and, attempting to be her normal and logically-minded self, began to work things out in spite of the rain-spattered, thick-fogged haze in her head. There was still the matter of whether or not she should tell Dean, and it was turning out to be the hardest decision of her life.

If she told him, it would destroy him. There was no doubt about that. He would be angry, too, because not only did Sam sleep with someone else while they were apart, but she neglected to tell him about it. Sam's brain concocted a worst case scenario, enacting a whole knockdown-blowout in which Dean shouted, teary-eyed, that he hated both her and Castiel. And the thing that hurt the most about this internal snippet was that he truly looked like he meant it. Sam had never seen him look at her with so much pure malice in his usually-soft green eyes.

If she did not tell him, the knowledge would probably gnaw at her until she couldn't take it anymore. It was hard enough going through the loss of a child - let alone a firstborn - , but to lose a child that was half hers and half someone's who was not the love of her life? An unbearable pain would be quadrupled, quintupled, or at least multiplied by as many _-uples_ as one could. She would have to endure this pain, but did Dean have to? Was it imperative that she put him through it? What if she lost not only her son, but her husband, her best friend? Then again, if she hid it, what would happen should he find out? Wouldn't that be worse than outright telling him?

Sam's head spun and spun in a million tiny circles within the span of the three or four seconds Castiel took to regain his composure. When her eyes flitted toward him, she found she could only manage to look at the tips of his shoes, but that was enough. She realized, rather suddenly, that while she had been mourning, he had been taking care of her. He had been making sure she was alright and fed and watered and still alive. And he did the same with Dean, as well. Castiel, angel of the Lord, willingly relinquished the time he should have taken for himself to grieve and gave it to the Winchesters in an act of selflessness that nearly threw Sam to the floor with its strength.

She didn't even register she had flown forward and hugged him tightly until he wrapped his arms around her, pressing his chin into her shoulder. A tear fell from her eye to the collar of his nice white shirt. It made a muted sort of sound. Her decision was made.

"Don't tell him," she whispered, so quietly she wondered if he could even hear her. "All it would do is hurt him. We can't change the past. We've just got to move on from it." She felt Castiel relax, his muscles releasing like lead melting. Another second and a half passed, and they pulled apart, otherworldly blue boring into a pair of watery hazels.

The next sentence was not a preformed thought in either of their brains.

"I can make you forget, if that's what you want," said Castiel sadly. Something cold dropped into Sam's stomach, but the idea was not unappealing. "It's like you said. All this is going to do is hurt, for a very long time. And I don't... want you to hurt, Sam." His eyes downcast, he reached forward and took her hand, tracing tiny, gentle circles on the back of it with his thumb. Sam noticed in the back of her mind how acutely similar his and Dean's hands were. "If you want me to take it away again, tell me, please. At least I'll know that I told you, and that you forgave me."

"This isn't something that needs to be forgiven," she replied immediately. She felt like she should have said so much more, about how she did not see it as a mistake, even if it ended in heartbreak. She thought should have said that she didn't see him as a mere passing fad, or a fling. She saw him as somebody she loved dearly, a kind, caring, protective, and brave somebody with whom she created a life that was far too beautiful to exist among ordinary humans. But Castiel looked back up at her, his eyes quivering just a little, and she knew that anything she felt she needed to say would never be enough to quell the sadness that lurked inside him. So, with a soft touch she hugged him once more and kissed his cheek. There was a thin brush of stubble lining his jaw, and it scraped enticingly against her own skin. That old longing she used to feel when they'd first met had died; she did not yearn for Castiel romantically anymore. The swell of overwhelming affection that filled her chest at the sound of his quiet sigh, and the feel of his unsteady arms, was that of love for a friend who had been through Heaven and Hell, both literally and metaphorically, just to stay by her side.

Castiel smiled when she released him. It was a small smile, but it seemed genuine. She did not tell him that she did not want to forget, but she didn't need to, really. He knew, just by the peaceful twinkle in her eye, that, even though knowing would be hard, her _not_ knowing would have killed him.

He wiped the tear track from her cheek with his thumb, and Sam mirrored that smile he'd just given her. After a beat, she let out a breath of air and said, "I'll see you tomorrow, Cas. Try and get some sleep." She touched his hand briefly, a gesture of encouragement.

"You too." He paused as she took a few steps back toward her bedroom, where Dean was probably still snoring soundly, blissfully oblivious to the fact that the world had been turned upside down and then righted again. She was halfway to the hall when she heard him add, in a lower voice than normal, "Goodnight, Sam."

Her heart warmed. "Goodnight, Cas," she replied without looking back.

Sam stood waiting outside her and Dean's room, feet frozen on the cold tile floor, until she heard the door to Castiel's bedroom open and shut on the opposite end of the hall. The bunker's stone walls, though soundproof within the rooms, echoed cavernously in the hallways. Breathing deeply, she entered her own room, and was promptly met by a ghastly, rolling snore from a mass of fabric and sheets on the bed. She grinned to herself, though in light of what she had learned, she felt as if smiling should be impossible. Yet here she was, gazing lovingly at her husband, and Sam figured that that was what categorized her as strong. The fact that she could smile in the face of sadness and horror and calamity. That she could keep going. That she could still love.

She'd never give him the satisfaction of hearing it out loud, because God knows he would get an even bigger head than usual, but Sam also wagered that Dean was what kept her strong, too.

Crawling over top of him to get back into her spot on the right side, she covered herself with the blankets and comforter, then wedged one of her icy feet between his two legs. Almost at once, he pulled away from her, relinquishing his iron-tight hold on the sheets enough for her to capture a reasonable amount for herself. Just as she was chuckling and turning on her right side to lay closer to him, Dean's eyes fluttered open. "Ev'rythin' okay, babe?" He draped his left arm over her hipbone, and she laced his fingers with those of her right hand.

"Yeah. Everything's okay." She sighed once again, this time contentedly. "I love you."

Dean nuzzled into the back of her neck, pressing a soft kiss there as he wrapped himself closely around her from behind. "Love you too, Sam."

The silence that followed that four-word sentence was the most beautiful silence Sam had experienced in a very, very long time. Maybe the sound of silence wasn't so maddening all the time, after all. Maybe she could learn to live with it, so long as it followed on the heels of a tender phrase, or directly preceded a reassuring touch or gaze. Maybe the silence of the nights here went unbroken, not because of impenetrable bunker fortifications or soundproofed walls, but because safety lay in the arms of the _since-the-beginning_ friends, the _I-have-taken-a-bullet-for-you-and-I'd-do-it-again_ lovers, the _there-ain't-no-me-if-there-ain't-no-you_ spouses, and the soulmates whose hearts, at the dawn of time, were inscribed with identical vows: _Until infinity, and then a day._


	46. If You're Going Through Hell

Sam and Dean's world had always been filled to the brim of uncommon occurrences and strange phenomena. They'd never questioned that. Their whole lives, for as long as they could remember, had been a mess of rocky relationships and unstable homes, mixed with a fair amount of monsters, a few fistfights, and a dash of death-and-resurrection. Their best friend was an angel, for God's sake. Things could get weird, and then weirder, but it seemed like nothing could truly surprise them anymore.

    When Sam came face-to-face with her childhood imaginary friend, it put that statement to the test. Sully was a tubby early-thirties man with a kind face and bright clothes. He had been Sam's best friend growing up; he was a shoulder to cry on, a person to play with, and a constant presence when she was lonely because Dean and her father were gone. He had appeared in the bunker's kitchen one morning as Sam stumbled in to brew a pot of coffee, and he'd set out all of the foods she had loved when she was little. It took some convincing - and an explanation of the fact that he was a Zanna, a species that existed to comfort and help desolate children - but eventually Sam and Dean could somewhat wrap their heads around things enough to help him. Sully's friend Sparkle had been murdered and he needed the Winchesters' help to find out why. So Sam and Dean did what Sam and Dean did best: they investigated.

    Even through all the mundane practices, Sully watched out for Sam's wellbeing. When they encountered certain dangerous aspects, he did everything in his power to keep her safe and as happy as she could be. The night they staked out the perpetrator, the two sat in a barn and hashed out a bit of the lingering awkwardness between them. Sam had been cruel to Sully their last day together, not necessarily because she was angry at him, but because she was confused and hurt in general. He had desperately tried to convince her not to go into the hunting business like John and Dean, but as a kid, oblivious to the horror and death of the job, she wanted to be part of the family. She had told Sully to leave, and, tearfully, that is what he had done. The night they caught the murderer, both sides apologized, and Sam filled her former imaginary friend in on the stillbirth of her son. He had listened with a heartbroken expression, watching her wipe away her tears. After a bit, Sully noted that even though Sam seemed content and happier because she was married to Dean, he still felt that she was scared. Which she was.

    Sam had been getting hallucinations about her time with Lucifer in the Cage of Hell for a while, and they terrified her. They would have her waking up at night trembling and crying. No matter what she did to stop them, the dreams and memories just kept coming back, and she was beginning to fear that this was a sign from God. She believed that He was telling her that, in order to defeat the Darkness and save the whole of existence, she needed to return to the Cage. Sully asked if she ever thought about running away from it all, like she had when she was young. "I have," was her dejected reply. "But not in a while. Not anymore."

    The murderer of Sparkle and several others turned out to be one of the other kids Sully had cared for after he and Sam split. Her name was Reece, and she was angry and depressed. She wanted revenge on him for leaving her after the death of her sister. Sully managed to talk her away from the trigger of a gun with apologies and tears, and before he and the Winchesters parted ways, he said to Dean, "Keep looking after Sam. Protect our girl."

    She confronted Dean with what she thought about the Cage as they drove back home. He refused to accept it, saying there had to be another way because there always was. Sam received no reply when she asked what that other way might be.

    Not long after that, the Winchesters teamed up with Crowley and Rowena yet again to visit Lucifer in the Cage and ask him about what he knew about Amara. He joked around, poking at Sam harshly and nearly driving her to hysteria just with his presence, even from many feet away. Eventually Sam was zapped into the Cage, and then was Dean, and then Castiel. It became a literal cage match, with punching and kicking as Lucifer released his rage about not having a compliant vessel to carry him back to the surface. As Sam lay unconscious against the bars of the Cage, and Dean struggled to rise to his feet and fight back, Lucifer held a bloodied Castiel to the wall.

"Can you really beat her?" the angel asked his brother lowly, unheard by everyone else present. "I can," said Lucifer. Castiel glared at the fallen archangel who had him pinned to the bars, and after less than a beat, he growled, "Then yes." Lucifer had grinned an evil grin, and with a flash of light that was credited to Rowena's spell, he inhabited the vessel of the late Jimmy Novak, sharing it with Castiel.

The Winchesters had no idea that their friend had been overpowered by the devil until they had managed to retrieve another Hand of God artifact from the past. Dean brought it back safely from a vessel that had sunk in the early 1950s, and the Castiel that was not Castiel broke character after playing the part of the thoughtful angel for several days. He was on the brink of destroying Sam when Dean returned, and when Sam saw him, she shrieked, "That's not Cas!"

Lucifer went on to attempt to take over Hell; then he moved to Heaven. Neither place was very keen on keeping him, and yet no one had the guts to overthrow him. Using God's disappearance as leverage, Lucifer beat both demons and angels into a grueling complacency as he raced against the Winchesters to figure out how to overcome Amara's power.

It would take some time before everyone realized that they needed each other to actually brainstorm anything to beat her. Before that time came, though, someone very important had to burst back onto the scene in the body of a scrawny D-list writer.

God was back - but He really preferred being called Chuck Shurley, author of the seemingly prophetic _Supernatural_ book series, and a few other hit-and-miss novels. He spent some time with Metatron in a bar in Heaven, working through his autobiography and stalling. The former scribe had turned tail for the good guys' side after losing his grace, and he desperately tried to convince Chuck to return to Earth, to his creation, and save everyone. After a while, and a bit of crying, he managed it, and the visage of Chuck appeared to the Winchesters in the middle of a decimated, post-crisis street that had been ravaged by the Darkness's toxic fog.

Sam and Dean, after recovering from the initial shock of having God, in the flesh, on their side, began working toward the end goal: incapacitating Amara. They found that they could not kill only her, for that would upset the balance between light and dark in the universe, and everything would cease to exist. She counteracted God's light with her dark. But she had taken Lucifer - and, by extension, Castiel - hostage, and was viciously torturing him to get a rise out of God. The first step in the plan to recapture Amara was to rescue Lucifer, a plan that the Winchesters supported, because it meant Castiel would be with them. At least, in form.

The escape plan got messy, and Metatron sacrificed himself for the greater good. Lucifer was brought safely to the bunker, Chuck healing all his wounds with a snap of his fingers. The Father-son tension was high as the four muddled through familial issues to come to a compromise about how to handle the Darkness. Chuck's final solution was to give himself to his sister, to let her destroy him and, consequently, everything he had ever created. Dean, however, talked him down off this martyr-esque soap box.

In the end, it was decided that Winchesters, God, Lucifer, Crowley and Rowena would all lure Amara into an old abandoned warehouse. They would use angel power to weaken her again, gathering all the angels in Heaven and having them use all their smiting abilities on her at once, and then cast a spell to send her back into captivity.

Plans never did seem to go the way Sam and Dean hoped, though.

The casualties at the end of the day were not anything to do with the Darkness herself. On the contrary, it was Lucifer that was obliterated by her unyielding hand. Then she went a step further and fatally wounded her brother, hitting him with all the energy she had and causing the flame of his life to flicker into near nothingness.

Another apocalypse was not on the horizon. The Horsemen were already dead and gone. The Tribulations had already been spent. Nothing was set in stone to lead gently to the end of the world. When the group, and an emasculated Castiel, walked outside, they were met with the blood-orange glow of a dying Sun. The sky was filled with salmon- and tangerine-tinted clouds, and though it was beautiful, a deep-seeded fear wedged its way beneath all their hearts. Castiel was the first to say what they were all thinking. "The Sun is the source of all life on earth. Without it, everything just... wastes away. She's going to sit back and watch Creation wither and die."

Amara, in a blind, revenge-driven rage, catalyzed the final countdown to the end of everything.

With Castiel back in action, a little bit of heart was added back into the equation, but it seemed that that wasn't enough. Sam was hell-bent on saving the world, just one more time, because she could not stop thinking about how Chuck told her that he had always had faith in her. She couldn't let him, or Dean, or _the whole of the universe_ , down. Everyone else, however, sat in a crestfallen stupor, beers and whiskey in hand and nothing up their sleeves. Sam continued searching through books until she found a plan that she thought would work. Everyone gathered together and Chuck said that he did not want to kill his sister, but it looked like that was the only thing left to do. He was going to die, and that would upset the balance between good and evil. If they both died, each side of the scale would be empty, and the balance would remain intact. In order to kill her, Chuck explained, they would need the strength of a hundred suns at supernova, a power to which they had no access due to his enervated state. Castiel suggested that they round up all the souls in Heaven and Hell to supply Rowena with ammunition for a spell big and bad enough to annihilate the ancient threat, once and for all. Hell, unfortunately, no longer wanted anything to do with the usurped King, and Heaven boarded its windows and locked its doors in response to the impending doom. It was at this major roadblock that Billie the reaper entered the bunker, unannounced and unexpected. Though she had strong distaste for the Winchesters, she furnished them with hundreds of thousands of souls to fuel the spell. Rowena revealed, a little late, that the spell was not even a spell at all. The souls would be placed inside of a walking grenade, someone who could get close to Amara because she trusted them and then detonate themselves.

No one had to say a name. All eyes were on Dean Winchester.

Sam tried to protest, but no one listened, and he agreed without so much as a glance her way. She watched Rowena transfer the souls into Dean's chest and clarify how he was supposed to explode himself when the time was right. There they all were, standing in the study that she and Dean had spent so much time in together, and they were discussing the details of his death like it was nothing important. Like it was not permanent. Like it did not kill Sam a little inside every passing second.

She stared at her husband but he didn't look her way. She was sure he probably could not stand to. Dean said something to Chuck, who nodded solemnly, and Sam was in the middle of wishing she could hear what he had whispered when she experienced the jolting sensation of being teleported to a new location. Chuck had snapped his fingers once more, using some of the only energy he had left, and he'd taken them to a field. He, Crowley, Rowena, and Castiel all stood at the edge of it. Dean was a few feet off.

It was drizzling. Headstones glistened all around in the light rain and dim sky. Willow trees bent over one another, shading some resting places from the fading sunlight. A mausoleum stood several hundred yards away. Sam did not have to look around much to know where she was. Dean took a deep breath and strode past her slowly, making his way to a gravestone beneath one of the weeping willows. Sam followed at an even more protracted pace; she kept a good ten feet between them till she reached the stone and silently stood to his left. It was old and there was a chip in the blue-gray marble in the upper right corner. _Mary Winchester_ , it read plainly. Beneath that were her birth and death dates. Beneath that, _Survived by her children: one blood, one chosen._

The two of them stared down at the stone for a minute or so before Sam worked up the strength to speak. "Dean," she said, her voice quiet and broken-sounding, "you know you d - you don't have to do this."

She watched him breathe again, his broad, muscular shoulders rising and falling one time. "'Course I do," was his low reply.

Tears sprung into her eyes and she bit her lip, glaring at the grass beneath her left foot. She couldn't really curse God for doing this, because He was right behind them and it was not really His doing. She'd come to discover that God was in the dark about the future just as much as the rest of them were, which was the polar opposite of everything she had ever learned in church and the Bible. Sam figured, if she were to ask Chuck, "Why Dean?", he would say, "I don't know." She had asked him why he had taken her son away from her before she ever knew him, and the only thing he could think of was something along the lines of Joshua's soul being too pure to abandon and leave for humans to corrupt. It didn't make Sam feel better, not even when he sincerely apologized.

Sam tried to imagine what it would be like to lose Dean again. In the few seconds between his first sentence and his next, she attempted to dream up what life would look like after his death. At this stage, it did not feel real. It felt like she was watching someone else feel it, or experiencing it secondhand. She felt like she was trapped in a bad dream, but she kept crying and crying and she wasn't sure what for, yet. Something inside her was being shattered, over and over again, but she could not find what it was. A life without Dean? She had tried to make that work a number of times. Going to college without Dean. Fighting evil with Ruby without Dean. Living with a man who wasn't Dean. Working out the Mark of Cain without Dean. No matter what she did, nothing ever seemed even remotely bearable unless he was there. Because he had always been there.

Right then, Sam prayed a simple, six-word prayer. She was not talking to God, or any angel. She was not even certain if this counted as a prayer. It didn't really have a start or finish. Just a thought, a plea, out there for anyone and everyone to hear.

_I cannot do this without Dean._

"I just have to get close," he continued. His voice filled her with something very solid, and another tear fell from her eye. He hadn't noticed her crying yet. "I can do that, okay? I can do that." It sounded as if he was trying to convince himself, too, and Sam swallowed hard to prevent herself from dissolving into sobs. Maybe part of this sensation was fear, too, not just sadness.

She sniffled soundlessly. "You know, if this works, um... that, uh, that bomb goes off." The last part of the sentence broke, her voice cracking up a notch and making it sound more like a question than a statement. Dean's eyes flickered her way; she watched his Adam's apple bob as he swallowed. The tear tracks on her cheeks were ice cold, though the day itself wasn't very chilly. Every part of her felt frozen. Head to toe, left to right, through and through, she was closer to being dead than she had ever been after a fight or wound. This was a different kind of death - the kind that was irreversible after it happened.

Believers in Christianity had always told Sam that, in order to fully be saved, she had to "die to herself." She was sure that euphemism had a hidden meaning, like giving up alcohol or never having sex again. Christians had, for years, explained that when she died to her selfish human ways, God would raise her to eternal life in His righteousness and grace. Or, as put to her by a pastor she met with while in college many years ago, "When you die to the things you know, God shows you the things you need."

But she was standing here now, almost entirely dead inside as the minutes ticked nearer to Dean's departure. And God was standing behind her, frail to the point that He could not stand on His own feet without being supported by someone or something.

It did not seem like there would be any _raising to life_ this time. Not ever again.

Dean's eyes zigzagged away when Sam finally managed to meet them, which, in essence, was a good thing. The moment his beautiful bright greens met her blue-green-hazel irises, she felt the weight of billions of people fall on her shoulders. She felt the warmth from six thousand suns, and flinched away from the scorching burn of zillions of stars. She felt the extreme frost of the coldest winter freeze her fingers. She felt the heat of the hottest desert, on the hottest day. She felt every blow she'd ever received in a fistfight, every slice of a blade, every bullet, and every broken bone. She felt a wave of dread crash over her as every dream she'd ever dreamt about the future and how it might have looked crumbled around her. She felt all the shards of each broken heart she had nursed back to health all stab into her chest at one time, making themselves known loud and clear.

He only looked at her for half a second, but it was long enough that she had time to stop trying to name all the things she felt. All poetics aside and every sweet-sounding or cogent synonym abandoned, what Sam Winchester experienced when her husband met her gaze was pain. Pure, unfiltered pain.

Dean turned on heel, his back now to his mother's grave, and patted Sam's shoulder quickly, like one might do with a stranger. "I know," he said, finally responding to her words. Her heart dropped down to her feet as she let out a tremulous breath. Dean walked over to the small group at the edge of the cemetery; his wife stood and looked at the gravestone for a few moments more. With teary eyes, Sam brought her own hand up to her lips, kissed her fingers, then touched them to the curve of the top of the marker.

A soft wind suddenly blew around her, lifting her hair up off her shoulders and causing it to flutter gracefully to her left. The way the leaves brushed against the bark of their trees, it almost sounded like the graveyard was whispering to her.

_Help me be strong, Mom. Either that, or make him take me with him._

"You cool with this?" she heard Dean inquire several feet away. She followed the sound of his voice and saw that he was talking to Chuck, who was growing paler by the second. Castiel glanced at her when she reached Dean's side. The empathy in his shocking blue eyes almost made her burst into tears. Even he knew that there was nothing they could do about it this time. Chuck sighed like he was in pain. "No," he replied truthfully. "I..." Another sigh escaped him, this one more frustrated. "Even after everything she's done, Amara's still my sister. She's still my family. I can't j - I don't want to see her dead, but..."

Dean raised his eyebrows. "Yeah?"

"... But I understand," said Chuck. His face was blank, laced with a hint of disappointment. Sam knew the look quite well. She wore it in the times she and Dean would fight. At that moment, she could not remember the last instance they had truly fought. It had been a very long time. They'd had a good, long streak going.

Castiel took a step toward Dean when Dean turned slightly, nodding politely at Crowley. "Dean," the angel said in his low voice. Sam's husband looked at him, and she saw him struggling not to let something break within him. "Cas," he answered flatly. With furrowed brows and his lips in a tight line, Castiel pulled Dean into a tight hug, capturing him for a good twenty seconds. Dean chuckled, "Okay," a few times before actually hugging back. He squinted his eyes and screwed up his face like he was in some sort of physical torment. His mouth became a pucker. When they pulled apart, Sam could vividly imagine the helplessly intense look on the angel's careworn face as he said, "I could go with you."

Sam's heart dropped, and she almost started crying yet again. He was offering to go and _die_ with him. Castiel was volunteering himself up to make a kamikaze mission into a double murder-suicide. He had narrowly escaped Lucifer's clutches, but here he was trying to give his life away again. For the sake of the greater good. For the sake of the ones he loved.

Dean's response was instant. "No. No, no, no... I gotta do this alone." He gave Castiel a thin smile, then it fell away once more. He put a hand on the angel's shoulder seriously. "Listen. If - _When_ ," he corrected himself. "When this works, Sam... she's gonna be a mess. So look out for her, okay? Keep her safe. Make sure she doesn't do anything stupid." The last sentence was spoken with a quirked half-smile, but there was no humor in his eyes. She was watching him very closely. What was swimming behind those enchanting irises was fear, and concern, and regret. He was practically drowning in it. Castiel nodded one time and said, "Of course."

"Thank you," Dean told him. Sincerity coated his words. "For everything."

Another nod from Castiel, and then Dean stepped around him so that he was in the semi-center of the group. He cleared his throat, his chest a bit puffed up, and said with a mischievous smile, "Alright, look. I want a big funeral."

That was the last thing Sam expected him to say. She stared at his face as he talked, bewilderment, despair and a hint of displaced anger flooding her veins. Her insides melted and her legs went weak when she started drinking in the details of him: his laughter lines crinkling as he narrowed his eyes when the sun shone in them, the two severe peaks of his lips and the dip between them, the slight stubble that shadowed his remarkably strong jawline. All the beauty about Dean that she noticed daily and loved so dearly was in no way more tangible now than it had ever been. Nothing about this moment made him more beautiful. But it was the fact that he was all she could see that made reality snap into focus. The earth around her was a big, dark blur, and Dean stood at the exact middle of the only circle of light. It seemed like he was creating the light, like it came off of him the more he spoke. And when he took a little breath between his first sentence and the next, she saw his hands shaking imperceptibly. Like he could feel her gaze, he looked at her square in the eye, and it was obvious that it wasn't just his hands. Even his chin was a bit wobbly. Of course, she would be the only person who'd pick up on it. She was the only one who knew where to look. Sam suddenly remembered a phrase she'd heard a long time ago. "The person you look at when you're afraid or stressed is the person you care the most about in the world."

She was looking at Dean. He looked right back.

"I'm talkin' epic," he continued after a beat. That playful grin seemed a little forced now. "Okay? Open bar, choir, Sabbath cover band, and uh... and Gary Busey reading the eulogy." That last part got a chuckle out of God. Sam scoffed under her breath at how he was being so casual and said simply, "Done." Her voice sounded like sandpaper. Dean heard it.

He made a wide gesture with his arm, vaguely pointing around him. "And for my ashes, I like it here," he added, slightly less upbeat than he had been. "You know, as far as eternal resting places go, I - "

"Stop," Sam choked out. Everyone looked at her; more teardrops dripped from her eyelashes and slid in the premade tracks on her cheeks. Her eyes were still locked on her husband, who stared back at her with the expression of a someone who had just seen a puppy get hit by a car. She shook her head at him, lower lip trembling. "Just stop."

Instead of moving on, Dean took a heavy step toward her, fishing in his jacket pocket for something. When the sound of jingling keys hit the air, Sam clamped her eyes shut and turned her head to the right. "Come on, you know the drill," his voice told her, and he sounded both firm and shaky at the same time. She tried to say no, but all that escaped her was a strangled whimper. Dean sighed, the sound like rolling thunder, and she opened her eyes to squint at him. Her vision was tear-blurred. She watched his mouth form the words, "C'mon now. No chick flick moments."

Again she let out a harsh, breathy scoff that was barely audible at all. If he hadn't been less than a foot away, he would not have heard it. His face contorted slightly into one that had more worry lines than she remembered were present in his skin. She lifted up her hand in one jerky motion, fingers open, and Dean gently laid his car keys in her palm. They were cold, but shone in the overcast light. Something that wasn't silver caught her eye, and, both to her expectation and horror, she noticed his wedding band lying amidst the moderately rusted metal. She did not comment on it, however. If it had been her, she would have done the same thing.

Then she remembered with a jolt that, in fact, she had.

"You love chick flicks," she said, her voice catching in her throat.

Dean chuckled weakly, and his eyes never wavered from hers. Something clicked behind his own, though. "Yeah, you're right. I do. Come here." The three sentences all ran together in a rush, and before she knew what was happening, he'd grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her into him. His strong arms wrapped around her as closely as he could muster; Sam fought with all her might not to start full-out sobbing. A knot formed in her windpipe as the tears built up. "I'm sorry," he breathed in her ear. She pressed her chin into his shoulder and held him back, her eyes shut tight, breathing in his scent.

She blocked the words _for the last time_ from her brain, not because she didn't believe it, but because if she let that phrase dance through her head, it would certainly be the end of her. She was close enough to the brink as it was.

The hug lasted about thirty seconds before Dean pulled back and looked deeply into her eyes, tears glistening in his own. Then he pressed their lips together. At first it was done firmly, but gradually the kiss softened as more and more heart was put behind his motive. This was a goodbye kiss. She knew he wanted to say everything he'd never said through action, not words. By the time they pulled away, Sam was breathless and her head was spinning.

"I love you," she told him. Again, it was as if her voice was not even coming from her vocal chords. Her words were quiet as the scraping of leaves on the tree bark around them, or the grass blowing in the breeze. The sentence was the sound of the wind over the tops of the headstones, cryptic and morbid but painfully beatific. It was something she'd said a countless number of times over the years. If she had not said it right then, he still would have known how much she loved him, because not a day went by that she did not tell him.

His hand cupping his wife's cheek, Dean tenderly brushed away a tear track, their noses touching at the tips. "I love you more," he said.

No words had ever sounded so sweet to Sam.

They moved apart, Dean giving her hand one last squeeze before stepping in Chuck's direction. Sam began to tremble violently as he walked away from her and faced God, fearless. "Okay," he admonished in his gravelly voice she was so desperately in love with. "Let's do this." Chuck nodded, then snapped his fingers.

And just like that, Dean was gone.

An hour or so later, Sam, Crowley, Castiel and Rowena would be sitting in a bar when the sunlight would revert to how it should be. They would all rush outside and stare up at the sky as the Sun regained its golden glow, as the clouds became their healthy fluffy white, as the azure of the sky returned. They would be standing in a circle when Castiel asked the big question, the only one that made sense now that the universe was fixed - "What about Dean?"

None of them would know, right then, that Dean Winchester managed to heal the brokenness between God and His sister. That Dean would be present to see them hold hands and smile at one another as they dissipated and flew off. That Dean, after realizing that he had no cell service, would stand and stare at the atmosphere around him and think to himself, _I can't wait to see Sam's face when I get home._

Castiel took Sam back to the bunker when no one heard from Dean. She was not in hysterics as he had expected. Quite the contrary, she was utterly silent as they walked down the little dirt ramp and descended the stairs. He followed close behind her every step, attempting to reach out to her soul without saying anything. When he felt a barrier, he knew he had to speak.

"Sam, I'm so sorry," he told her sincerely, his own heart feeling the weight of what he had lost, as well. Her shoulders tensed into taut wires when she heard his voice, but she kept going down the steps into the main study that opened up before them. "If you need to talk..." Castiel paused as he stepped off the last few stairs and stood still behind her. "I'm here if you need anything."

"Thanks, Cas, but I - " she began. Her voice choked her a little and she felt the waterworks coming again. "I just need to..." She whimpered, pressing a hand hard to her mouth, and something inside Castiel shattered. He strode forward and caught her by the arm, worried her knees would give out, when he heard a voice.

"Hello, hello!"

He turned just in time to see the backlit silhouette of a woman standing in the empty doorframe between the study and the library. Something dripped from the tip of her finger to the floor. Before he could register anything other than her vague form and the fact that her accent was English, the figure slammed her hand on the wall, and he was blown backward in a flash of blinding white-blue light. He collapsed to the ground of what seemed to be a forest, dead leaves crackling around him. A quick glance to his left and right confirmed that he had absolutely no idea where he had been sent. His muscles now felt like Jell-O, but he scrambled to his feet anyway and forced his mind to focus on the bunker. As he pictured its bomb-shelter-like layout, he could almost hear Sam calling his name.

_Sam. I have to get to Sam._

When he opened his eyes again, he stood about three hundred yards away from the bunker. Castiel broke out in a sprint, praying to whoever might have been listening that Sam was still there. And alive.

His internal dialogue grew fierce. _After everything, this is not how it will end. This is not._

He nearly tore the door off its hinges and skidded down the unsteady dirt slope to the inner door. The angel's heart was pounding out of his chest, adrenaline coursing through his veins and propelling him to move faster than he ever had without using his wings. Her name kept repeating itself on a loop in his head. He collided with the wall and did not even feel it, simply scrabbled with the submarine-modeled wheel.

When he pried open the inside door, the first sound that met his ears was a gunshot. Then silence. Uninterrupted, unbearable, impregnable _silence_.

Castiel froze. His first thought was a loud, screeching, pain-driven, _No_. Then it became, _Perhaps the world was meant to end today, after all._

A million miles away, wandering through a dense thicket of trees, Dean was pondering on how Amara promised to give him what he wanted most when he heard a woman calling for help. Her voice was vaguely familiar, but not enough that he could place it. He stood stock still and held his breath, attempting to figure out where she was, when suddenly a figure burst through the brush. She was in a white night gown, and her hair was long and platinum blond. Her facial structure was angular, yet beautiful.

Dean's heart stopped. "Mom?"


	47. Till The End

"How're you doing?" Castiel asked conversationally, smiling in his soft way. Content, Sam sighed and leaned back into the cushions of her armchair. "Still doing pretty well. Hasn't been very eventful since the last time I saw you, really." Castiel chuckled. "Yeah, doesn't seem to change much around here, does it?" he inquired. She just shrugged in response, but a smile tugged at her mouth.

"Mommy, I can't find the train!" shouted a distraught little voice from the kitchen. "And the lights on my boat stopped working!" The angel and the Winchester shared a fond laugh.

Castiel came to visit Sam fairly often, when he could. She loved seeing him. And her son absolutely _adored_ the angel, and vice-versa. The way they got along warmed Sam's heart. Joshua Sean had chosen to be a six-year-old, at the time. If he wanted to be older, he could be. That was just what he wanted to experience right then. Really, Sam did not mind. He loved cuddling with her, and holding her hand, and letting her read and sing to him and hold him close. And he was so beautiful. Soft golden brown hair grew in random, frenzied directions all over his head. His eyes were an enchanting shade of hazel streaked with the bluest of blue and the greenest of green. Even though he was not Dean's child, Sam was so thankful that there was at least a bit of her true love within the boy.

Dean.

Sam watched him, too. Castiel had managed to get the angels to allow her to tune the television to a frequency that followed Dean around his life. Heaven was a lot kinder, now that God had gone for good. Which was odd, to Sam, but she did not question it. God visited Heaven before He went on His way and set them all straight. That was why Castiel was able to visit her so much.

It broke her heart to watch Dean, in the beginning. Castiel fixed the TV within the first day she was there. Her personal Heaven was the bunker (not a surprise). It was vast and held all the rooms the original did, so it was almost like she was there with him. In the beginning, Dean cried a lot. Much more than Sam had ever seen. When he first came home with Mary, so excited to introduce her to Sam, and saw his wife on the ground - well, suffice it so say Sam would never want to re-watch those moments ever again.

Castiel had obliterated the woman who shot her, Toni Bevell. She was a Woman of Letters from England, sent to bring in the Winchesters for punishment for their crimes against humanity. Sam had tested her by saying, when Toni pulled out a gun, that both of them knew she would not shoot. Apparently, only one of them knew, and that person was very wrong.

Also on Castiel's hit list was the reaper, Billie, who came to collect Sam almost instantly. The angel destroyed her on the spot with a phrase that Sam knew would be etched across the walls of time: "It's not your say who goes to Heaven or Hell."

Dean cried for three months solid. Mary did everything she could to comfort him, though she herself was heartbroken to lose her adopted daughter before she ever even truly met her. Before giving her a hunter's burial, he dressed her in the dress she had worn to their makeshift wedding and made sure all three of her rings were on her fingers: engagement, wedding, and promise. She remembered watching him debate with himself aloud about whether or not he should keep the promise ring. In the end, he decided it should go with her, because, as he said, "No one else is ever going to be worthy of a promise to my heart." He and Castiel burned her bones together, Mary standing off to the side, looking down at the baby-sized grave nearby.

Sam Winchester's ashes were buried next to her son behind an old bunker in Lebanon, Kansas. Her husband, Dean, would also be buried there, after several more decades of half a life.

Mary and Dean spent the rest of their time catching up. With the universe no longer in danger, and no one to keep him from going off the deep end while fighting monsters, Dean gave up hunting once and for all. He never got remarried, nor did he ever have another girlfriend. Mary, too, remained single, and they lived together in the bunker, reading about what the Men of Letters did and talking about Sam, every now and then. Dean loved and hated to talk about Sam. If he did, it was like she was just in the other room, and he had to brag before she came back and gave him her signature shut up look. But her name left a strange taste in his mouth now, like the memory of a food one ate as a child that one can never identify. It left him feeling hollow inside.

Castiel had to talk Dean away from the barrel of a gun more than plenty of times. Every time Sam caught herself off-handedly missing him, it was as if Dean could feel her emotions intensified by a googolplex. Being in Heaven numbed her to all bad feelings, so she really couldn't quite understand why Castiel kept Dean alive when he was so unhappy without her. But Mary needed Dean, just like Sam had when she was still living, and Castiel knew that.

Presently, Joshua Sean ran into the room toting a small, but scaled, toy train. Castiel had brought it to him the last time he visited. When the child caught sight of his father, he lit up like a Christmas tree. "Hi Daddy!" he shrieked, dropping the toy to the floor and bounding over to jump in the angel's lap. Castiel chuckled again as Joshua's skinny arms wrapped around his neck. "Hi, buddy."

Sam was smiling faintly to herself, just gazing at them, when she heard a floorboard creak somewhere behind her. No swell of panic set in, nor did she jump to see who it was. She simply raised her eyebrows a bit and turned her head to the left.

Even in the corner of her eye, the very edge of her periphery vision, she knew who stood in Heaven's recreation of the bunker. Slowly she rose from her seat, and Joshua went silent as the grave, sliding off Castiel's lap. Sam breathed deeply and measuredly, staring at the figure in the middle of the study.

Dean.

Tears were already falling from his eyes as he stumbled toward her like a drunken man. Her heart soared at the sight of him, and she lunged herself into his arms, clinging to him tightly the millisecond she confirmed that he was real. Dean's crying turned into heavy sobs; he clutched to her like he was drowning. Sam inhaled him and buried her face in the side of his neck, and one of his hands began stroking her hair, and she was suddenly hit with how terribly she had been longing for him. He echoed her name hoarsely for a few moments before he planted a soft kiss on her lips. Their foreheads touched together, and they just stood there, looking at each other up close, bright green on multicolor hazel.

"Hi, other Daddy," said Joshua in a tiny voice from beneath them. Dean looked down at the little boy, then knelt beside him. "Hey, kid," he replied thickly. Fresh tears leaked from his eyes but he didn't seem to mind. Sam pressed two fingers to her lips, and turned to look at Castiel, whose expression clearly showed every emotion he felt. Happiness, pride, thankfulness, bittersweetness, and a bit of relief.

Sam's insides went cold. "Dean," she started, admittedly rather shakily. He looked at her at the sound of his name, and the euphoria on his face was indescribable. She realized a bit too late that it had been many years since he had heard her speak a word, much less say his name. "How... how are y—?"

"There was an accident," said Castiel. Everyone looked at him expectantly; Joshua reached out and grabbed his mother's hand. "Mary and Dean were driving back to the bunker when a semi-truck hit them sidelong. Mary was killed on impact. Dean died two hours later in the hospital."

Sam felt herself crying, but did not necessarily feel sad. Dean got back to his feet and wiped the track away. "Mom's in her own Heaven. I've already seen her. She said she'll come visit really soon, once she gets adjusted." He rolled his eyes good-naturedly.

"Did it hurt?" she whispered, touching the left flap of his jacket with her eyes on his torso. "Were you in pain?" He shook his head at her lovingly, then took her chin between his thumb and forefinger and tilted her head so that she was looking at him. "I was in a coma," he said, deadpan. "Plus, I was probably sky high on morphine." Sam let out a small laugh that was purely the effect of comedic relief. "I'm so sorry," she said to him after a beat. The gaze she had on him was intense.

Dean shook his head again. "I'm not. You weren't there to make a deal with a demon and keep me alive, which, for once, was a good thing." She dropped her eyes from his, and he laced their fingers together. "Sammy, I've been wanting to be with you since I was nine years old. Did you really think that'd stop when you died?" She smiled a very tiny smile. "I've been fighting to get back to you from the second you left me," he added quietly. "And now here I am."

"Here you are," she repeated. She leaned down a little and kissed him, this time longer, and Joshua made a loud, "Blech!" sound. The Winchesters broke apart laughing. Castiel looked between them with the most at-ease face that Sam had ever seen on him.

An idea occurred to her, then. Something she and Dean used to talk about in the moments things weren't hectic. "I guess now we really can have a normal life, huh?" she teased. "Y'know, now that we're dead."

Dean laughed. "If that wasn't the best example of how hellish our lives have been, I don't know what is."

"That may be true, but hey, we have all eternity to think of some brand new examples," she answered back grinningly. Her husband looked at her with such a concentrated love that Sam felt her heart flutter for the first time in a long time. Joshua took Dean's hand in his other, and Castiel stepped forward to ruffle the child's hair affectionately.

All the time in the world.

The Winchesters finally got their happily ever after.

 


	48. and here we are at the end

this last chapter is pretty pointless, unless you actually liked my chapter titles! so when i wrote this, i titled every chapter with a song (or lyrics from a song) in my ipod that i thought fit the context. here's a list of the songs, in chapter order, that are featured in this fanfic - and i think you should listen to them if you haven't yet, because they're aaawweeessommmeee

 

**_What Doesn't Kill You (Stronger)_ ** _by Kelly Clarkson_

**_All Or Nothing At All_ ** _by Switchfoot_

**_Little Things_ ** _by One Direction_

**_Welcome Home, Son_ ** _by Radical Face_

**_For The First Time_ ** _by The Script_

**_Little Lion Man_ ** _by Mumford & Sons_

**_Keeping Secrets_ ** _by Kicking Daisies_

**_Do I Wanna Know?_ ** _by Arctic Monkeys_

**_Restless_ ** _by Switchfoot_

**_Wrong For The Right Reasons_** _by Connie Britton_ (not on my ipod but pretty good!)

**_You Don't Scare Me_ ** _by Josh Pyke_

**_Breakeven (Falling To Pieces)_ ** _by The Script_

**_Echo_ ** _by Jason Walker_

**_Dear Old Friend!_ ** _by Sierra Boggess, Joseph Millson, Sally Dexter, and Summer Stralen (from "Love Never Dies" )_

**_Memphis_** _by Jessica Harp_ (good song. not on my ipod but i need it)

**_Things We Lost In The Fire_ ** _by Bastille_

**_In Too Deep_ ** _by Sum 41_

**_Yesterdays_ ** _by Switchfoot_

**_The Silence_ ** _by Bastille_

**_Angel On My Shoulder_** _by Kaskade_ (not on my ipod but i like kaskade. they're cool)

**_XO_ ** _by Fall Out Boy_

**_More Than A Feeling_ ** _by Boston_

**_Roots_ ** _by Imagine Dragons_

**_Family Matters_** _(theme song)_ (again, not on my ipod. don't like the song much lol)

**_I Bet My Life_ ** _by Imagine Dragons_

**_Dead On Arrival_ ** _by Fall Out Boy_

**_Memories_ ** _by Panic! At The Disco_

**_I Was Broken_ ** _by Marcus Foster_

**_Laughter Lines_ ** _by Bastille_

**_Far Longer Than Forever_ ** _by Liz Callaway and Howard McGillin (from "The Swan Princess" [1994 film])_

**_Death of a Bachelor_ ** _by Panic! At The Disco_

**_Always_ ** _by Panic! At The Disco_

**_What Is And What Should Never Be_** _by Led Zeppelin_

**_This Isn't The End_ ** _by Owl City_

**_Desperate Measures_ ** _by Mariana's Trench_

**_The Story Of Your Life_ ** _by Five For Fighting_

**_Lying Is The Most Fun A Girl Can Have Without Taking Her Clothes Off_ ** _by Panic! At The Disco_

**_That Green Gentleman_ ** _by Panic! At The Disco_

**_Brand New Sun_ ** _by Jason Lytle_

**_Wait For It_ ** _by Leslie Odom, Jr. (from "Hamilton")_

**_Life_ ** _by Sleeping At Last_

**_World Spins Madly On_ ** _by The Weepies_

**_How Can I Help You Say Goodbye?_ ** _by Patty Loveless_

_**Salt** by Bad Suns_

_**If You're Going Through Hell** by Rodney Atkins_

_**The End of All Time** by Stars of Track and Field_

 

side note: pls listen to all these songs (except the ones i say not to unless ur feelin brave) bc omg

thank you all so much for reading :)


End file.
